
Class 
Book. 




, r$>5 



Copyright If . 



COPVR1GKT DEPOSIT. 



WILL-POWER, PERSONAL 
MAGNETISM, MEMORY- 
TRAINING, and SUCCESS 



By 
SYDNEY B. FLOWER 



Illustrated by 
ETHEL STAHL 



NEW THOUGHT BOOK DEPARTMENT 
722-732 Sherman St., Chicago, 111. 



NEW THOUGHT 

A monthly magazine, 6x9, illustrated, 32 
pages. Price, 20 cents a copy; $1.50 a 
year of eight numbers. New Thought is 
not issued June, July, August and Sep- 
tember. 

* * * 
New Thought carries articles each month on 
Health, Success, Happiness, Right Think- 
ing, Psychic Phenomena, Astrology, Spirit- 
ualism, etc., etc., written by AUTHOR- 
ITIES on these subjects. 

^5 ^ ^ 

Every number is a FEAST of GOOD 
THINGS. 

^ ^ ^ 

Dr. J. R. Brinkley, famous as the origina- 
tor of the Goat-Gland Transplantation for 
the Cure of Old Age, Locomotor Ataxia, 
Insanity, and Arterio-Sclerosis, writes a 
series of EXCLUSIVE ARTICLES for 
New Thought. 

* * * 

You may not believe in Astrology, but you 
should, at least, READ what Athene Ron- 
dell, the editor of the Department of As- 
trology, in New Thought, has to say. These 

ij brilliant articles will make you reconsider. 
I * * H 

m You may not believe in spirit-return, but 

§ you should read what the best writers on 

|j this subject have to say in every number 

| of New Thought. 

MAY 31 1921 
§>C!.A614550 




The list of famous contributors include: 
William Walker Atkinson, easily first of 
New Thought writers, and Ella Wheeler 
Wilcox, in a reproduction of a series of 
articles written for The New Thought 
Magazine seventeen years ago, but as new 
and true and vital as if written yesterday; 
Arthur Brisbane, first journalist of the 
United States, in his skeptical conclusions 
regarding spirit-return ; Athene Rondell, Al- 
berta Jean Rowell, Mrs. Veni Cooper-Ma- 
thieson, Dr. Eugene Holt Eastman, Charles 
Edmund DeLand, member of the South Da- 
kota Bar, etc., etc. 

SPECIAL OFFER 

Your subscription should begin with Vol. 
1, No. 1, October, 1920. We will send this 
complete set of Vol. 1 of New Thought, 
eight numbers, as issued, from October, 
1920, to May, 1921, on receipt of $1 from 
you, for the U. S. ; $1.25 Canada and For- 
eign. 

This permits you to keep on file a com- 
plete set of these valuable magazines from 
the beginning, and preserve them for bind- 
ing at the close of the volume, May, 1921. 
This volume, bound in cloth, will be issued 
later at $2.50 per copy, postpaid to any 
part of the world. 

Address, NEW THOUGHT, 
732 Sherman St., Chicago, 111. 



Wmg^ffigffl^^mSMIBWBGfflM^^WglSEfflBE^^^ 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. STRONG and WEAK WILLS. ... 11 
First Exercise in Meditation 15 

II. THE MECHANISM OF WILL. . . 18 

Second Exercise in Meditation ... 24 

III. CONSCIOUS THINKING. THE 

FIRST STEPS 27 

Third Exercise in Meditation .... 34 

IV. THE HEART OF THE MATTER 36 
Fourth Exercise in Meditation ... 42 

V. FURTHER STEPS IN WILL- 
TRAINING 44 

Fifth Exercise in Meditation. ... 50 

VI. SELF-DISCIPLINE 53 

Sixth Exercise in Meditation 59 

VII. THE MAGNETIC MAN OR 

WOMAN 61 

Seventh Exercise in Meditation . . 67 

VIII. DYNAMIC THINKING 70 

Eighth Exercise in Meditation.. 76 

IX. THE LAW OF FINANCIAL SUC- 
CESS 79 

X. CONCLUSION 85 



ILLUSTRATIONS 
Strong Will the Victor over Failure . Frontispiece 

Building Will by Refusal 12 

The Will to Serve 21 

Samadhi Breathing 28 and 29 

Paying the Price 37 

Difficult Concentration 46 

The Two Voices 57 . 

The Magnetic Personality 62 

"Serene I Fold my Hands" 71 

Hope „ 75 

Denying the Impulse to Give 81 



Copyright, 1921 
By Sydney B. Flower 



INTRODUCTION 

The object of this book is to make plain to 
the reader, in the fewest possible words, that 
a general law underlies those desirable results 
of human attainment which show forth as "At- 
tractive Personalities," "Successful Lives," 
"Men of Strong Will," "Men and women of 
Achievement," etc., etc.; that this general law 
is simple of comprehension and easy of ap- 
plication; that it works smoothly and unfail- 
ingly and without exceptions, as a general law 
should work to be worthy of the name; and 
that it is within the power, therefore, of every 
reader to make over his own character, and 
amend his fortunes, by changing his plane of 
vibration to correspond with the basic condi- 
tions required to cause the Law of Success to 
operate in his own case. 

It is made plain that a trained will is the 
basis of all successful human endeavor, and 
to put the matter in a nutshell, here and now, 
it is shown that Will is built in one way, and 
in one way only, namely, by making yourself 
do something you do not want to do. In no 
other way whatever is Will built and de- 
veloped. This is the basic thing. This 
is at the root of the general law of Suc- 
cess, whether Financial, Social, Political, Do- 
mestic, or what not. You will distinguish be- 
tween the building of Will, on the one hand, 
and the application of Will to an end, which is 



INTRODUCTION 

Ambition. It will be clear to you that Abra- 
ham Lincoln's determination to educate him- 
self, in the face of serious difficulties, is not the 
building of Will, but the application of Will- 
Power to an end. In his case the Will was 
already built. He had only to apply the power 
to a purpose. In this book, on the other hand, 
we assume that the Will is yet to be built: 
We make it very plain HOW it is built, and 
we insist upon the point that Will is built in 
no other way whatever than by compelling 
^yourself to do something you shrink from do- 
ing, which implies also its reverse of com- 
pelling yourself to refrain from doing some- 
thing you want to do. 

It is evident that this is a very little book. 
The intention was to make it of as few pages 
as possible. When you have the heart of a 
matter before you in a few words you are less 
likely to mistake the meaning than if it were 
diffused throughout a bulky volume, which 
must necessarily consist of much padding. - 

Padding is the inexcusable thing in the mak- ^4~ 

ing of books. In the 38th Chapter of the Book -^ 

of Job, 2nd verse, it is written, "Who is this 
that darkeneth counsel by words without 
knowledge?" and, indeed, it seems to us a 
truism that four-fifths of the books- of the 
world could with advantage be cut down to 
one-half or one-quarter their bulk. The in- 
tent of this book also is that the reader may 
straightway derive benefit for himself by forth- 
with following the directions given. The pur- 
pose is to be immediately helpful. The plan 
is to tell the reader something of value of 



INTRODUCTION 

which he can make instant use to his own 
advantage, now and at once. 

The instructions and exercises given here 
are addressed directly to men, but this is done 
merely for convenience in writing. The mes- 
sage of the One-Best-Way Series of New 
Thought books is addressed equally to women, 
and nothing which is set down as attainable 
by the man is an unattainable goal for the 
woman. On the contrary, the woman student 
by reason of her quicker apprehension will 
profit by this instruction more swiftly than the 
man, being less encumbered by doubts and 
hesitations and fear of ridicule, and more ad- 
vantaged by her intuitive assent and warmth 
of feeling than he by his slower process of 
reasoning things out. While he thinks, she 
feels. To both, however, the results will event- 
ually prove the soundness of the instruction. 

Chicago: September, 1920. 



CHAPTER I 

STRONG AND WEAK WILLS 

Much is contained in the common adjective 
"strong-willed," that is not at once apparent. 
Just what do you understand by the term? 
Do you mean a person who is not easily influ- 
enced by others? Probably. Let us see what 
more is meant. A strong will means first of 
all the power of concentrated thought upon 
any subject, which means again the power of 
sustained concentration upon any subject re- 
gardless of obstacles. The obstacles may be 
presented by yourself or others, they may as- 
sail your attention from within or from with- 
out, taking many forms, persuasive, threaten- 
ing, commanding, but, where they meet with 
the strength of will which is natural to the 
normal human being they fall back, are shaken 
off, withdraw as a wave withdraws after 
spending its force against a rock. On the 
other hand, the weak will, easily diverted from 
its purpose, lends attentive ear to any obsta- 
cles to concentration that present themselves, 
and as often as they may present themselves, 
and is swayed this way and that, achieving 
nothing except the expenditure of time, find- 
ing even memory so much affected by the play 
of conflicting attention that the mind carries 
away from the task, when the losing struggle 
is finally relinquished altogether, nothing but 

11 



12 



WILL-POWER 




WILL-POWER 13 

a strong distaste for the subject and all that 
concerns it. Yet this distaste was not at all 
the object the weak will had in mind when it 
began its task. Its intention was to do some- 
thing by concentrating its attention. It has 
done nothing but waste time, which is the re- 
verse of what is intended. That is one phase. 
There are wishes which are light as thistle- 
down, forgotten as soon as thought, scarcely 
taking form in consciousness, and there are 
deep wishes of the heart which shake the man 
to the depths of his being. It is usual, how- 
ever, to distinguish between a wish and a de- 
sire because of this quality of depth of feel- 
ing in the one and not in the other. Our 
wishes are in the main fleeting, ephemeral 
things, not connected with will, whereas our 
desires are deeply planted growths of feeling 
which have the amazing property of some- 
times moving in accord with the will and 
sometimes being flatly opposed to it. When 
the mind is in this condition of confusion 
where will and desire clash we say that the 
man is harassed by conflicting desires. This 
state of mind is one of the commonest of the 
petty tragedies of our existence. The undis- 
ciplined mind is especially prone to this state 
of conflict because the undisciplined mind is 
one that does not use the will in its manner 
of self-government, and the result is not unlike 
an untended garden where weeds and grass 
errow as they please and choke the flowers and 
fruits. The commonest phrase is "I can't help 
my feelings," which is another way of saying, 
"I can't help my desires." We expect to show 



/ 



14 WILL-POWER 

you that this statement is entirely untrue, 
and to make it evident to you that its un- 
truth is clearly established by the funda- 
mentals of the system of will-training set 
forth here. It would be an unfortunate 
thing, indeed, for the human race if it were 
true that a man could not change his de- 
sires, or his feelings or his will, or his 
wishes, since it would mean that he was in- 
capable of any self-improvement whatever. 
Exactly the contrary is the case. The truth 
is that the mind of man is subject to the dis- 
cipline which his will imposes upon it, and 
that his feelings, desires, emotions and wishes 
are vassal to his will, which is the ruler. The 
strong will rules the man. The weak will, 
obedient where it should command, is swayed 
by passion, dominated by emotion, controlled 
by feeling, thrall to desire, tossed hither and 
thither by wishes; in a word, is acted upon 
instead of acting. 

Nevertheless, though the will is the rightful 
ruler of the mind it has happened again and 
again in the history of mankind that a man 
of strong will has been at the same time a man 
of strong passions or emotions, and it is by 
no means the rule that where the emotions 
are strong the will is weak. But the popular 
phrase sometimes throws a clear light on a 
problem, and it will occur to you that the 
popular phrase in connection with a man who 
has exhibited strong feeling, for example, a 
burst of anger, is, "He gave way to his 
temper!" This is illuminating. Clearly if he 
"gave way" he interposed no check; he made 



WILL-POWER 15 

no use of his natural power of control; his 
will abdicated in favor of an inferior ruler. 

We are accustomed to quote Napoleon as 
an example of a man of strong will, because 
of the marvel of his career as the ruler of 
many kingdoms, his amazing rise from a youth 
of poverty and insignificance in Corsica, to be 
a young lieutenant of artillery, to be head of 
the army, to be Emperor of France, and to 
be conqueror of Austria, Italy and Spain. If 
we are right in our statement that a general 
law underlies all success achieved by individ- 
ual men it is necessary to show that this gen- 
eral law operated also in the case of the suc- 
cess of this eminent example, Napoleon the 
First, Emperor of the French. 

There is an attractive quality in individuals 
for which no better name has been found 
than Personal Magnetism, by which is meant 
that this person, whether man or woman, 
exercises some peculiar fascination over others 
to the extent of making himself or herself 
generally liked by all, achieving both popular- 
ity and success not by the compulsion of a 
dominant will but as something freely ac- 
corded, gladly yielded, by others, the effect of 
success being in this case achieved apparently 
without effort. We expect to show that this 
quality of Personal Magnetism is derived from 
an exertion of the trained will, and is identical 
with will in action. 

FIRST EXERCISE IN MEDITATION 
The extracts selected from Emerson, Marcus Aurelius 
and Epictetus, which are used in this book as graded 
exercises in concentration of thought, are to be read 



16 WILL-POWER 

slowly and ponderingly, and are prescribed to be taken 
at the rate of one exercise daily throughout the year. 
The effect of such daily reading, for a purpose, is two- 
fold; it drills the mind in the essential of obedience 
to the Will, and it feeds the mind with the highest 
quality of food, offered in such form that no possible 
mental indigestion can result. The constant reading 
and rereading of these exercises will in time impress 
them so firmly in the memory that they will later become 
the fabric of which the thought of the reader is com- 
posed. There should be no effort, however, at this 
time, or at any later time, to learn the paragraphs 
by heart. Such an effort would hinder the purpose of 
the exercise, which is, first of all, to convey to the 
reader's mind a complete thought, to be assimilated by 
slow pondering on its meaning, building Right Thought. 

To the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint, all things 
are friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days 
holy, all men divine. — Emerson. 

To believe your own thought, to believe that what 
is true for you in your private heart is true for all 
men, that is genius. — Emerson. 

A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam 
of light which flashes across his mind from within, 
more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and 
sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought 
because it is his. — Emerson. 

Trust thyself : every heart vibrates to that iron string. 
— Emerson. 

I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is for 
itself and not for a spectacle. — Emerson. 

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what 
the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual 
and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole dis- 
tinction between greatness and meanness. It is the 
harder because you will always find those who think 
they know what is your duty better than you know it. 
— Emerson. 

It is easy in the world to live after the world's 
opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; 
but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd 
keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of soli- 
tude. — Emerson. 



WILL-POWER 17 

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, 
adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. 
With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to 
do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow 
on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words 
and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard 
words again, though it contradict everything you said 
today. — Emerson. 

Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras 
was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, 
and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every 
pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great 
is to be misunderstood. — Emerson. 

We pass for what we are. Character teaches above 
our wills. Men imagine that they communicate their 
virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see 
that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment. — 
Emerson. 

Always scorn appearances and you always may. The 
force of character is cumulative. All the foregone days 
of virtue work their health into this. — Emerson. 

Ordinarily, everybody in society Reminds us of some- 
what else, or of some other person. Character, reality, 
reminds you of nothing else; it takes place of the 
whole creation. The man must be so much that he 
must make all circumstances indifferent. — Emerson. 



CHAPTER II 
THE MECHANISM OF WILL 

If it is true that the wicked man is invari- 
ably the sick and unhappy man, then it is true 
that a strong will is a product of the spiritual 
part of man, but if it is a fact that a man of 
strong will is often very happy, very healthy 
and at the same time very wicked, it must be 
true that the will is developed upon a physical 
basis, just as the body is developed upon a 
physical basis of cells. The very foundation, 
therefore, of this system of will-training is 
concerned with the question whether ethics, 
morality, and religion constitute any part of 
it. It may be positively answered once and 
for all that the forming of will is a physical 
process, and that the question of what you 
will or how you will is a moral or ethical ques- 
tion that follows upon the building of the 
will itself. It has to do with what use you 
make of the strong will after it has been built. 
It has nothing to do with the building of the 
will itself. The seat of the will is the grey 
matter of the brain, or the brain-cells of the 
anterior lobes, which extend to include the 
cerebro-spinal nervous system as a whole. 
The reasoning brain of man, therefore, is the 
seat of will, and this is more or less confirmed 
by the fact that in sleep, when the reasoning 
brain is not active, the will is almost entirely 

18 



WILL-POWER 19 

in abeyance. Being physical in its origin, 
therefore, the will must show the mutabilities 
of things physical, and must share to a large 
extent in the fatigues and refreshments of the 
physical body. It does show these physical 
reactions in a marked degree, but it has the 
power, not possessed by the body as a whole, 
of maintaining a sustained activity in the face 
of physical fatigues, and therefore possesses 
the property of transcending the limits of mat- 
ter in going beyond physical endurance. Will 
in its origin is physical, but will in activity is 
physical, mental and spiritual, partaking of the 
triune nature of man. 

Because will is of physical origin it is built, 
developed or trained in the same way that a 
muscle of the body is built, developed and 
trained. The building of will is therefore a 
matter of exercise of the mind, or exercise of 
attention, a bestowing of conscious thought 
upon an act or set of acts, just as a muscle 
grows in quantity and quality when it is con- 
sciously exercised. It is not a matter of dif- 
ficult effort. ( It is jiot more difficult than the 
training of a muscle. As in the case of the 
developed muscle the developed will calls only 
for sustained attention, or repetitions of exer- 
cise. This very absence of difficulty, however, 
is the chief reason why our educators have 
neglected to make the training of the will a 
subject of special study in the schools. Over- 
looking the tremendously important fact that a 
strong will is the basis of a strong character, 
they have laid out their plan of education of 
the young on lines which develop the brain as 



20 WILL-POWER 

a whole, which train the student in voluntary 
attention and concentration and memory, but 
afford the pupil no glimpse of the fundamental 
acts required to develop will-power for its own 
sake. It is never impressed upon the pupil at 
any time that will-power is the key to char- 
acter, and that its development is therefore of 
greater importance than a knowledge of his- 
tory* geography, mathematics, etc., etc. In 
schools the training of the will is expected to 
take care of itself, and it does take care of it- 
self, with the result that our young men and 
women graduate from college with heads well- 
stocked with a vast amount of information 
which they spend the rest of their lives forget- 
ting, but with no knowledge whatever of the 
very important truth that will-power is built 
as muscle is built. They have muscular power 
a-plenty, because they were taught in college 
how to grow muscle, but if they enter upon 
their after-college career with strong wills it 
is a chance result brought about by the acci- 
dent of some indirect suggestion which has 
taken root in their minds, or it has been caused 
by private conditions of struggle and hardship 
connected with the pupil's home-life which 
have acted as a training of the will, quite 
apart from the training of the mind received 
through the college course. 

We have Schopenhauer's "Will to Live," 
Nietzsche's "Will to Power," and Lincoln's 
"Will to Serve," to pick from as attainable re- 
sults of our system of will-training, and our 
choice will naturally fall upon the last as the 
best of the three. The Will to Live is the 



WILL-POWER 



21 




22 WILL-POWER 

instinctive effort of all living things to main- 
tain life for themselves in the fullest, most 
enjoyable and easiest manner. The Will to 
Power is the urge of ambition that actuates 
most human beings who rise above the animal 
in their hopes and fears, and who are capable 
of sustained thought to a purposeful end, but 
the Will to Power is in its essence selfish and 
self-centered, and is concerned with attain- 
ment or success for the sake of the personal 
gratification involved in the exercise of power 
won by effort. The Will to Serve, of which no 
higher example has ever been afforded in 
human life than by the illustrious Abraham 
Lincoln, is the Aaron's rod that swallows up 
those minor conceptions, the Will to Live and 
the Will to Power, pointing up to the highest 
possible in human achievement. This Will to 
Serve being our choice, therefore, it is requi- 
site to show that, as in the case of Napoleon, 
the general law explained in this system of 
training of the will is the underlying factor 
in the development of the splendidly rounded 
character of Abraham Lincoln. This means 
that it is possible for you to choose whether 
you will be satisfied with a character develop- 
ment in your own case sufficient to bring to 
you material success in wealth and property, 
or whether you will hitch your wagon to a 
star and be content with nothing less than the 
highest, namely, the Will to Serve. 

As a spur to effort no condition of life has 
proved to be so salutary as poverty or lack of 
ease and absence of luxury. Elbert Hubbard, 
one of our most brilliant men, said once that 



WILL-POWER 23 

it would be found on investigation that nine- 
tenths of our great men had warmed their bare 
feet on cold winter mornings in the places 
where the cows had lain, and he laid stress 
upon this condition of hard poverty in youth 
to account for the rapid after-rise to fame and 
fortune of those farmer-boys. This youth of 
poverty was present, as we all know, in the 
cases of our two notable examples of strong- 
willed men, Napoleon and Lincoln, but we 
should not on that account swing to the ex- 
treme of supposing that the Will to Power and 
the Will to Serve are unattainable unless pre- 
ceded by or accompanied by the restrictions 
of grinding poverty. We call your attention 
to the spur of poverty at this time not as a 
necessary condition of your training for the 
development of will-power, but as an example 
of how an obstacle, the obstacle of poverty, 
was overcome by two of the earth's greatest 
men, and brushed aside as too slight a thing 
to impede their progress towards their goal. 
Napoleon's mother took in washing to earn 
food. Napoleon starved in lodgings while 
waiting for his commission. He lived on dry 
bread for a week. Lincoln, the rail-splitter, 
read the books that laid the foundation of his 
education by the light of the wood-fire on the 
hearth. Both carried the white flame of their 
ambition in their hearts through all privation 
and obstruction. Both fed the inward fire 
with their comfort, their ease, their enjoyment 
of lesser things. Both sacrificed on the altar 
of unswerving purpose. Both developed an 
inexhaustible patience. Both developed a will 



24 WILL-POWER 

of iron. Both reached the goal of their ambi- 
tion. It is for the student of history rather 
than for us, to contrast the degrees of this at- 
tainment. We note here only that one devel- 
oped the Will to Power, the other the Will to 
Serve. 

SECOND EXERCISE IN MEDITATION 

Men exist for the sake of one another. Teach them 
then, or bear with them. — Aurelius. 

Look within. Within is the fountain of good, and 
it will ever bubble up, if thou wilt ever dig. — Aurelius. 

The art of life is more like the wrestler's art than 
the dancer's in respect of this that it should stand ready 
and firm to meet onsets which are sudden and unex- 
pected. — Aurelius. 

Retire into thyself. — Aurelius. 

Think not so much of what thou hast not, as of 
what thou hast: but of the things which thou hast 
select the best, and then reflect how eagerly they would 
have been sought, if thou hadst them not. At the same 
time, however, take care that thou dost not through 
being so pleased with them accustom thyself to over- 
value them, so as to be disturbed if ever thou shouldst 
not have them. — Aurelius. 

A scowling look is altogether unnatural; when it is 
often assumed, the result is that all comeliness dies 
away, and at last is so completely extinguished that it 
cannot be again lighted up at all. Try to conclude from 
this very fact that it is contrary to reason. — Aurelius. 

Be thou erect, or be made erect. — Aurelius. 

Be not ashamed to be helped; for it is thy business 
to do thy duty like a soldier in the assault on a town. 
How then, if being lame thou canst not mount up on 
the battlements alone, but with the help of another it 
i s pos sible ? — A urelius. 

Let not future things disturb thee, for thou wilt 
come to them, if it shall be necessary, having with 
thee the same reason which now thou usest for present 
things. — Aurelius. 



WILL-POWER 25 

That which is not good for the swarm, neither is it 
good for the bee. — Aurelius. 

I do my duty: other things trouble me not. — Aurelius. 

No great thing cometh suddenly into being, for not 
even a bunch of grapes can, or a fig. If you say to 
me now, "I desire a fig," I answer that there is need 
of time: let it first of all flower, and then bring forth 
the fruit, and then ripen. When the fruit of a fig-tree 
is not perfected at once, and in a single hour, would 
you win the fruit of a man's mind thus quickly and 
easily ? — Epictetus. 

We see then that the carpenter becomes a carpenter 
by learning something, and by learning something the 
pilot becomes a pilot. And here also is it not on this 
wise? Is it enough that we merely wish to become 
good and wise, or must we not also learn something? 
— Epictetus. 

The philosophers say that, before all things, it is need- 
ful to learn that God is, and taketh thought for all 
things; and that nothing can be hid from him, neither 
deeds, nor even thoughts or wishes. Thereafter, of 
what nature the Gods are. For whatever they are 
found to be, he who would please and serve them must 
strive, with all his might, to be like unto them. If the 
Divine is faithful, so must he be faithful; if free, 
so must he be fre'e; if beneficent, so must he be benef- 
icent; if high-minded, so must he be high-minded; so 
that thus emulating God, he shall both do and speak 
the things that follow therefrom. — Epictetus. 

Know, that not easily shall a conviction arise in a 
man unless he every day speak the same things and 
hear the same things, and at the same time apply them 
unto life. — Epictetus. 

First, then, thou must purify thy ruling faculty, and 
this vocation of thine also, saying: Now it is my 
mind I must shape, as the carpenter shapes wood and 
the shoemaker leather. — Epictetus. 

Show me a Stoic, if ye have one. Where or how can 
ye? But persons that repeat the phrases of Stoicism, pi 
these ye can show us any number. * * * Show him 
to me ! by the Gods ! Fain would I see a Stoic ! * 
* * Dome this favor — grudge not an old man a sight 
that I have nevei; seen yet. Think ye that I would have 



26 WILL-POWER 

you show me the Zeus of Pheidias or the Athene— 
a work all ivory and gold ? Nay ; but let one show 
me a man's soul that longs to be like-minded with 
God, and to blame neither Gods nor men, and not 
to fail in any effort or avoidance, and not to be wrath- 
ful, nor envious, nor jealous, but — for why should I 
make rounds to say it? — that desires to become a God 
from a man, and in this body of ours, this corpse, is 
mindful of his fellowship with Zeus. Show me that 
man. But ye cannot! — Epictetus. 

Give me one man that cares how he shall do any- 
thing—that thinks not of the gaining of the thing, 
but thinks of his own energy. — Epictetus, 

It is not things, but the opinions about the things, 
that trouble mankind. Thus Death is nothing terrible; 
if it were so, it would have appeared so to Socrates. 
But the opinion we have about Death, that it is terrible, 
that is wherein the terror lieth. When, therefore, we 
are hindered, or troubled, or grieved, never let us 
blame any other but ourselves; that is to say, our 
opinions. A man undisciplined in philosophy blames 
others in matters in which he fares ill ; one who begins 
to be disciplined blames himself; one who is disciplined, 
neither others nor himself. — Epictetus, 

There are thr^e divisions of Philosophy wherein a 
man must exercise himself who would be wise and 
good. * * * Of these the chief and most urgent is 
that which hath to do with the passions, for the pas- 
sions arise in no other way than by our failing in 
endeavor to attain or to avoid something. This it is 
which brings in troubles and tumults and ill-luck and 
misfortune, that is the cause of griefs and lamentations 
and envies, that makes envious and jealous men; by 
which things we become unabte even to hear the doc- 
trines of reason. — Epictetus. 

"Shall I then exist no longer?" Nay, thou shalt 
exist, but as something else, whereof the universe hath 
now need. For neither didst thou choose thine own 
time to come into existence, but when the universe had 
need of thee. — Epictetus. 



CHAPTER III 
CONSCIOUS THINKING. THE FIRST STEPS 

When the intention is formed in the mind 
to develop a strong will it is necessary to take 
control of certain phenomena of living that 
have been hitherto performed automatically, 
or without conscious thought. The mere at- 
tention given by the mind to the act is the 
first step in conscious thinking and constitutes 
an exercise of the will. The act of breathing, 
for example, is from our birth up an automatic 
or unconscious act for all of us, but we shall 
make important use of conscious breathing in 
this system of training the will. We select the 
act of breathing as our basis of directing the 
thought because of its instant bearing upon 
the bodily health of the student. It is evident 
that if the result of the student's first efforts 
towards training of the will produce immediate 
advantages to his condition of bodily health 
he will be impressed to give a quick and eager 
attention to the details that follow in order. 
For this reason, namely, that he may receive 
benefit from the beginning of his practice of 
the system taught here, we start his exercises 
with the act of breathing, focusing his atten- 
tion upon the simple acts of inhaling, holding 
the breath, and exhaling. 

The Yogis of India have followed a similar 
plan of instruction to their pupils who are in 

27 



28 



WILL-POWER 



s» 



Saroadbi 
>Breatbinh / 

ifo.1 

T 



Sal 

Count 

4 



Inhale air info 
bif of s'fom&cb. 

L - -=a! 



\> 



.- * 



- tl 



^a&^i 



InbdJe air into 
Upper chest. 



WILL-POWER 



29 



ifaZ 




' Breath 



Expand-alternately -.abdomen aDd 
cbesf^f orcibly .8-1iroes.e^cn. 



30 WILL-POWER 

search of The Way. In selecting that form of 
exercise which should most rapidly and com- 
pletely develop will-power and concentration 
in their pupils the Gurus or Teachers found 
nothing so good for the purpose as breathing 
exercises, teaching the pupil control of matter 
by mind, developing concentration, training 
him in sustained attention, and showing him 
interesting results, all at one and the same 
time. Therefore, instead of breathing auto- 
matically, as you do at present, you are to 
begin from this time to practice the Samadhi 
Breath, at all times, in all places, and seasons, 
wherever such practice is not attended with 
embarrassment. The method is not difficult. 
It consists in inhaling through the nostrils, 
keeping the mouth firmly closed, a deep breath 
while you count the numerals over to your- 
self as far as eight; holding this breath while 
you count eight, and exhaling it while you 
count eight. This completes the Samadhi 
Breath. The exhaling also is by way of the 
nostrils; never through the mouth. The in- 
haling is performed in a certain manner, as 
follows : while walking, standing, sitting up 
straight in a chair, or lying down, inhale for 
four seconds as much air as you can at the pit 
of the stomach or abdomen, keeping the upper 
chest motionless, then for the remaining four 
seconds inhale as much air as you can into the 
upper chest and ribs. This completes the in- 
halation while you count eight. The holding 
of the breath is also to be performed in a cer- 
tain manner, as follows : expand alternately the 
chest and abdomen forcibly eight times, while 



WILL-POWER 31 

holding this breath, endeavoring by this exer- 
cise to force all the air which you have inhaled 
in this combined breath, first down into the 
abdomen, then back into the upper chest, then 
down again into the abdomen, and so on, al- 
ternating the expansion of chest and abdomen 
eight times. The exhaling is to be performed 
by one continuous and smoothly controlled ef- 
fort, noiselessly through the nostrils. 

This alternating exercise while holding the 
breath is valuable to you far two reasons : it 
teaches you breath-control, and it also per- 
forms for you the astonishing feat of breaking 
up and preventing Fear and Worry. It con- 
stitutes an addition to the usual Samadhi 
Breath as taught by the Yogis, and is better 
suited to our western methods of securing the 
biggest results in the shortest possible time. 
It is well worth your while to obtain mastery 
over such depressing emotions as Fear and 
Worry while you are taking the very first 
steps in training the will by conscious think- 
ing. We kill two birds with one stone thereby. 

It may not seem to you at first glance that 
the training of the memory has anything to do 
with the training of the w T ill, but you will per- 
ceive very rapidly that it has much to do with 
it. Briefly, without an obedient memory suc- 
cess is impossible. The forgetful mind is a 
mind only fifty per cent efficient. A forgetful 
mind is an undisciplined mind. The essential 
thing in this system is that it brings the 
powers of the mind under the control of the 
will. The practices and exercises which are 
given here for the purpose of establishing this 



32 WILL-POWER 

control of will over mind do at the same time 
train and strengthen the will itself by making 
it bestir itself and attend to certain operations 
which had formerly been carried out uncon- 
sciously or automatically. Do not let this 
point escape you. To repeat. The act of sus- 
tained attention is itself an act of will. The 
training of memory is as simple as A, B, C. 
Books have been written on this one theme; 
elaborate systems have been devised ; mnemon- 
ics have almost a bibliography of their own. 
Our business is to get at the heart of the mat- 
ter, and save your time and our own. We 
therefore put forward the startling statement 
that your memory, however deficient it may 
seem to you to be, requires but one daily or 
nightly exercise to make it function perfectly. 
You may supplement this single exercise with 
as many others as you please, and the results 
will not be other than good, because the more 
practice you give your memory the more 
quickly it will respond to your attention, and 
the more remarkable feats it will perform for 
you at command, but insofar as perfect func- 
tioning goes we repeat that a faithful nightly 
performance of the single exercise that fol- 
lows will work such- a change in that inatten- 
tive memory of yours that it will seem to you 
like magic. The exercise is performed as fol- 
lows : At night when you are in bed bring to 
your mind in their order the events of the day 
from the moment when you got out of bed in 
the morning till you got back to it at night. 
Take the events of today only for review. 
Hold your mind still and attentive to the task 



WILL-POWER 33 

you have set it. Use your power of visualiz- 
ing the happenings in their order. You got 
out of bed, you bathed, dressed, ate breakfast, 
went to your office, met various people, did 
certain work, had lunch, etc., etc. Review the 
whole day's occurrences, and do it rapidly, 
omitting nothing. See in your mind the hap- 
penings as they happened. It will astonish you 
to discover that the effort to concentrate your 
mind on this feat will be a distinct effort. 
Your attention will wander in spite of your- 
self. Remembering that all this fits into the 
training of the will, you will recall your wan- 
dering attention to the matter in hand. This 
exercise put in practice every night indefinitely 
will teach you many surprising things about 
yourself. First it will show you how indis- 
tinct your inpressions are in general; how 
defective and inattentive your memory is ; how 
faint your power of seeing things in the mind's 
eye has become since you were a child. There 
was a time in your life when you saw with the 
mind as you now see with the eye, as clearly 
in general and in detail. This faculty of visual- 
ization has departed with your youth because 
you gave up exercising it; it rusted and fell 
away from you. This memory exercise is de- 
signed to revive it, and will revive it. The next 
thing that will be clear to you is that after a 
week's practice of this memory exercise your 
thoughts arrange themselves in order twice as 
quickly as at the beginning of the exercise. 
You will be surprised that the effort to recall 
is no longer an effort. You will be glad to 
feel a distinct interest in the proceeding, and 



34 WILL-POWER 

you will experience the enjoyment of a skil- 
ful player at a fascinating game. After one 
month's daily or rather nightly practice of this 
memory exercise you will be amazed to find 
that in your daily work your memory will give 
you a service that you never knew before. You 
will find that your attention has sharpened in 
business detail, and you will rejoice in posses- 
sion of a memory on which you can rely. 

THE THIRD EXERCISE IN MEDITATION 

Every man discriminates between the voluntary acts 
of his mind and his involuntary perceptions, and knows 
that to his involuntary perceptions a perfect faith is 
due. He may err in the expression of them, but he 
knows that these things are so, like day and night, 
not to be disputed. — Emerson. 

We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which 
makes us receivers of its truth and organs of its activity. 
— Emerson. 

We denote this primary wisdom as Intuition, whilst 
all later teachings are tuitions. — Emerson. 

In that deep force, the last fact behind which analysis 
cannot go, all things find their common origin. For 
the sense of being which in calm hours rises, we know 
not how, in the soul, is not diverse from things, from 
space, from light, from time, from man, but one with 
them and proceeds obviously from the same source 
whence their life and being also proceed. * * * 
Here i* the fountain of action and of thought. Here 
are the lungs of that inspiration ( which giveth man 
wisdom and which cannot be denied without impiety 
and atheism—Emerson. 

Thoughtless people contradict as readily the state- 
ment of perceptions as of opinions, or rather much 
more readily; for they do not distinguish between per- 
ception and notion. They fancy that I choose # to see 
this or that thing. But perception is not whimsical, 
but fatal. — Emerson. 

The relations of the soul to the divine spirit are 



WILL-POWER 35 

so pu£e that it is profane to seek to interpose helps. 
It must be that when God speaketh he should com- 
municate, not one thing, but all things; should fill the 
world with his voice; should scatter forth light, nature, 
time, souls, from the center of the present thought; 
and new date and new create the whole.— Emerson, 

Whenever a mind is simple and receives a divine 
wisdom, old things pass away — means, teachers, texts, 
temples fall ; it lives now, and absorbs past and future 
into the present hour. — Emerson. 

Whence then this worship of the past? The cen- 
turies are conspirators against the sanity and author- 
ity of the soul. Time and space are but physiological 
colors which the eye makes, but the soul is light; 
where it is, is day; where it was, is night; and history 
is an impertinence and an injury if it be anything 
more than a cheerful apologue or parable of my being 
and becoming. — Emerson. 

Man is timid and apologetic ; he is no longer upright ; 
he dares not say "I think," "I am," but quotes some 
saint or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of 
grass or the blowing rose. — Emerson. 

These roses under my window make no reference 
to former roses or to better ones; they are for what 
they are; they exist with God today. There is no time 
to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in 
every moment of its existence. Before a leaf-bud has 
burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower there 
is no more; in the leafless root there is no- less. Its 
nature is satisfied and it satisfies nature in all moments 
alike. — Emerson. 

But man postpones or remembers ; he does not live 
in the present, but with reverted 'eye laments the past, 
or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on 
tiptoe to foresee the future. — Emerson. 

If we live truly, we shall see truly. . It is as easy 
for the strong man to be strong, as it is for the weak 
to be weak. — Emerson. 

Who has more obedience than I masters me, though 
he should not raise his finger.— Emerson. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE HEART OF THE MATTER 

Quite at the beginning of this book, in the 
Introduction itself, we spoke of a general law 
that underlay the phenomenon of strong will, 
personal magnetism, success, etc., etc., and 
we spoke of this general law as applicable in 
all cases of human achievement without a 
single exception. This is the time to state 
what that general law consists of, and it will 
be profitable for you to apply it as a test not 
only to such illustrious examples as Napoleon, 
Abraham Lincoln, John D. Rockefeller, and 
other national celebrities, but to cast up in 
your mind a list of such men and women as 
you have known who seemed to you worthy 
of your respect. You will find in every in- 
stance that men and women who have reached 
distinction by their own efforts have either 
by self-training or by natural inheritance 
shown themselves to be possessed of that 
quality of stoicism which in its lowest form 
is typical of the native North American Indian. 
It is not an insensibility to pain that is meant 
here, but a disregard of discomfort, an indif- 
ference to pleasure, a contempt of luxury. 
This is the basic quality of all strong willed 
men and women, and it is worth our while to 
amplify the statement that you may conceive 
the matter as a whole. Regarded from its re- 

36 



WILL-POWER 



37 




38 WILL-POWER 

verse side the question that presents itself to 
us is : Why did such a one make a failure ? 
The answer will be found to dovetail into the 
explanation, — because he could not stand the 
gaff! Because he had never learned or been 
trained to accept discomfort, pain, suffering, 
hardship, as merely obstacles to be overcome ! 
Because he had never learned or been trained 
to endure to the end ! Because he lay down ! 
Because he was unwilling to pay the price of 
success ! Because his heart was in the present 
pain instead of being in the future gain ! Be- 
cause he changed his mind ! There you have 
the basic thing. This is the general law, sim- 
ply and plainly stated. The will to endure is 
the magic key that unlocks the temple door. 

Consider the case of John D. Rockefeller. 
We may have our own opinion upon whether 
he did a great thing in rolling up a huge for- 
tune, but let us take the common judgment in 
the matter for purposes of illustration only, 
and admit that here is a case of successful 
operation of development of Will to Power. 
What price, think you, was demanded here? 
Picture to yourselves how you would have met 
the situation that confronted him in the early 
days of Standard Oil. Would you have 
put aside all amusements, holidays, relaxa- 
tions? Would you have been as ruthless in 
destroying the business of competitors? 
Would you have been even as conscientious as 
was this modern pirate in offering such com- 
petitors a fair purchase price for their business 
before smashing them when they refused your 
terms? Would }^ou have gone as straight to 



WILL-POWER 39 

the goal as he went, or would you have loitered 
by the way? Would you have been as thor- 
ough? Would you have seen as clearly and 
as far? Would you have conducted a business 
of these colossal proportions, reaching to re- 
mote corners of the earth, with the scrupulous 
efficiency in detail as in vision, in large matters 
and in little matters, shown by this mammoth 
organization of which John D. Rockefeller was 
the guiding spirit? We have nothing to do 
with that queer twist of the intelligence which 
makes him today regard the Standard Oil 
Company as in some sort working for the 
glory of God and the good of humanity. He 
is not and has never been a hypocrite. It is 
odd that he should be able to believe that his 
way was a right way and a justifiable way, but 
that is oddness only; it is not hypocrisy. We 
are concerned here with the story of his life in 
one aspect only, as showing forth the basic 
thing that crowned his life-work towards at- 
tainment of the Will to Power, the stoic qual- 
ity that commanded success. He paid the 
price asked. "What will you have?" quoth 
God. "Pay for it and take it." He paid the 
price asked. Whether he paid too high a price 
is his affair. 

Consider the case of the man who after 
three unsuccessful atempts did finally plant the 
Stars and Stripes at the North Pole, Com- 
mander Peary. Here was the will to endure 
to the end in full flower. What would you 
have done in his case? Do you know any- 
thing of the bitter cold of the Arctic? Have 
you ever experienced even 40 degrees below 



40 WILL-POWER 

zero, which is only half as cold as the tempera- 
ture Peary and his men were forced to endure? 
Do you know anything of the pains of frost- 
bitten hands and feet? Taking the character 
of the man as guide we should say that Peary's 
effort was another striking example of the ful- 
fulment of the Will to Power. He paid the 
price of success in full. 

Let us conclude our quest with him, the 
man of sublimest memory, Abraham Lincoln. 
A plain man of the people, but the most per- 
fect example that history affords of the attain- 
ment of complete success in the most difficult 
of human aims, the Will to Service. Other 
men, saints and martyrs, have reached the 
heights of Will to Service, but they were 
buoyed up in their hours of blackest despair by 
their triumphant faith in the prayers of the 
righteous. Here was a kindly man with the 
burden of the blood of half a continent on his 
shoulders, unable to say more than "I have 
been driven oftentimes to my knees by the 
sure knowledge that there was nowhere else 
to go !" How would you have met those fre- 
quent delegations of ministers of the gospel 
who waited upon Mr. Lincoln with prayers, en- 
treaties and demands that he stop the war that 
was rending this land? Could you have en- 
dured to the end? When you stood alone in 
the faith that right makes might could you 
have gone forward as he did, unfaltering, hu- 
mane,, kindly, merciful, gentle to the last? This 
is the most kingly man that ever lived, the 
sanest, the wisest, the strongest, and the most 
honest. This is the Will to Service at its best 



WILL-POWER 41 

and fairest. A sad man; a lonely man. He 
paid the price without wincing. Paid in full 
measure and running over. 

It should be evident to you from what has 
been briefly said above that you pay a price 
for all you achieve. And you do not always 
achieve. You may perhaps be called upon to 
pay the price in advance of reaching the goal, 
which you may never reach. That happens. 
But let that give you no concern. The im- 
portant thing to you is the effort. The value 
to you lies in the good attempt. If Peary had 
never reached the Pole the inspiration of his 
life-work would have meant as much to the 
youth of this country and to himself as his 
success has meant. The strong endeavor is 
the thing that counts. The value of this self- 
training will make itself evident to you from 
day to day. You will perceive in yourself the 
benefit you are deriving from introducing the 
driving force of thought-control into your 
daily life. It is in a sort a weeding of the 
mental garden. There is a fascination about 
this work that will hold you to it faithfully 
once you have begun it. You will not look 
back after putting your hand to the plough, 
except to note your progress. The rewards are 
generous and immediate. It is a good plan to 
carry on this work in groups of two or three in 
order that you may have opportunity to discuss 
the steps as you take them and compare ex- 
periences. The progress or lack of progress 
of one is a help to the other. Mutual discus- 
sion helps to impress the detail of the work 
more forcibly on your mind. Remember that 



42 WILL-POWER 

this is your work. No one can do it for you. 
It can be done only by you. And it can be 
done only in this way, by little steps, taken one 
at a time. There is no royal road. You were 
told at the beginning that the way was easy. 
It is. But you must tread it constantly. You 
must practice faithfully. If you stop you rust. 
If the way seems too easy to you just at this 
time, remember that the results must prove 
themselves to you step by step. You are not 
asked to take anything on faith. The results 
themselves will show you that you are on the 
right road. That is your proof. 

FOURTH EXERCISE IN MEDITATION 

How strangely men act. They will not praise those 
who are living at the same time and living with them- 
selves; but to. be themselves praised by posterity, by 
those whom they have never seen nor ever will see, 
this they set much value on. But this is very much the 
same as if thou shouldst be grieved because those 
who have lived before thee did not praise thee. — 
Aurelius. 

If a thing is difficult to be accomplished by thyself, 
do not think that it is impossible for a man : but if 
anything is possible for a man and conformable to 
his nature, think that this can be attained by thyself 
too. — Aurelius. 

If any man is able to convince me and show me 
that I do not think or act right, I will gladly change; 
for I seek the truth, by which no man was ever injured. 
But he is injured who abides in his error and igno- 
rance. — A urelius. 

In the gymnastic exercises suppose that a man has 
torn thee with his nails, and by dashing against thy 
head has inflicted a wound. Well, we neither show 
any signs of vexation, nor are we offended, nor do 
we suspect him afterwards as a treacherous fellow; 
and yet we are on our guard against him, not however 



WILL-POWER 43 

as an enemy, nor yet with suspicion, but we quietly 
get out of his way. Something like this let thy behavior; 
be in all the other parts of life; let us overlook many 
things in those who are like antagonists in the gymna- 
sium. For it is in our power, as I said, to get out 
of the way, and to have no suspicion nor hatred. — 
Aurelius. 

When thou hast been compelled by circumstances 
to be disturbed in a manner, quickly return to thyself 
and do not continue out of tune longer than the com- 
pulsion lasts ; for thou wilt have more mastery over 
the harmony by continually recurring to it. — Aurelius. 

The best way of avenging thyself is not to become 
like the wrong-doer. — Aurelius. 

The universe is either a confusion, and a mutual 
involution of things, and a dispersion; or it is unity 
and order and providence. — Aurelius. 

The appearances by which the mind of man is smit- 
ten with the first aspect of a thing as it approaches 
the soul, are not matters of the will, nor can we con- 
trol them; but by a certain force of their own the 
objects which we have to comprehend are borne in 
upon us. But that ratification of them, which we 
name assent, whereby the appearances are compre- 
hended and judged, these are voluntary, and are done 
by human choice. Wherefore at a sound from the 
heavens, or from the downfall of something, or some 
signal of danger, or anything else of this kind, it 
must needs be that the soul of the philosopher too shall 
be somewhat moved, and he shall shrink and grow 
pale ; not through any opinion of evil that he has formed, 
but through certain rapid and unconsidered motions 
that forestall the office of the mind and reason. Soon, 
however, that philosopher doth not approve the appear- 
ances to be truly objects of terror to his soul, — that 
is to say, he assents not to them, nor ratifies them; 
but he rejects them, and casts them out; nor doth 
there seem to be in them anything that he should fear. 



CHAPTER V 

FURTHER STEPS IN WILL-TRAINING 

After you have spent one month in practic- 
ing the breathing and memory exercises given 
above, you should not discontinue them, but 
practice them assiduously every day, adding 
to them, however, the following, which may 
be used at odd times during the day whenever 
the necessary leisure offers itself. The exer- 
cises may be taken in any order that is agree- 
able and are not to be considered as a progress- 
ive table, to be adhered to without change. 
The important thing is not the order in which 
the exercises are taken, but the steady continu- 
ity of the practice. Make a practice of reading 
and writing in those places where you are 
most sure of constant interruptions. Instead 
of letting yourself be annoyed and disturbed 
by noises and interruptions breaking in upon 
your work, welcome them with pleasure, and 
train your attention to give you proper service 
by demanding of it that it pay no heed to dis- 
turbances without, but concentrate itself upon 
the task you have set before it. Treat your 
mental faculties as though they were responsi- 
ble for any loss of ease you may suffer because 
they were not competent to handle the job you 
had given them. You will find this plan work 
wonders. The mind does indeed act under the 
lash of your reproach much as a well-trained 

44 



WILL-POWER 45 

setter dog who had been at fault by running 
wild; that is to say, it will cringe and try to 
make amends for past misconduct by doing 
better at the next task you set it. Note this. 
You may make an egregious failure of it the 
first time you try to write or read in surround- 
ings of excitement and disturbance, but you 
will not make as complete a failure of the 
second attempt of the same kind. The atten- 
tion will come to heel and obey just as soon as 
it perceives that you are in earnest and mean 
what you say. Follow this exercise with any 
other of the same kind that suggests itself to 
you as convenient to your business, bearing in 
mind that the end sought is a determination of 
the will on your part not to permit yourself 
to be annoyed or disturbed by things that 
have hitherto always had the power to annoy 
you excessively. You are to prove to yourself 
your own developing control over your feel- 
ings, emotions, and passions. Irritability falls 
not far short of the passion of anger, and it will 
be a notable achievement for you in so short a 
space as one month to prove to yourself that 
your will is in command when challenged. 
There are numberless variations of this exer- 
cise that will occur to you. You will have no 
need to hunt far for material to prove your 
will upon. Opportunities to practice your new- 
found control will spring up on all sides of 
you. Try them all. They are all fish for your 
net. You cannot overdo this exercise. Re- 
member. From henceforth you go out of your 
way to welcome annoyance, disturbance, in- 
terruption, etc., etc. — you welcome trouble; 



46 



WILL-POWER 




WILL-POWER 47 

you ask for it. It is by facing trouble with 
mind undisturbed that you build will. Will 
does not grow while you are entertained at 
the theatre, except on such occasion as it may 
happen that someone near you in that theatre 
is making a nuisance of himself by talking and 
so interrupting the performance, preventing 
you perhaps from hearing clearly. That is an 
occasion for exercising control made ready to 
your hand. Will grows amid disturbance, 
trouble and temper. Will grows where diffi- 
culties flourish. Look for those places. They 
are your natural habitat for a long time to 
come. You are entering upon the good fight. 
It is a long fight. There is no end to it. But 
you will be astonished at your developing 
skill as a fighter. You will always ask for 
practice, and the conditions of business in this 
day and age are such that you will never for 
a minute be balked of your desire. There will 
always be trouble waiting for you to practice 
on just around the corner. Oceans of it. 

Instead of praying that you be not led into 
temptation you should begin now to ask for it 
in the same vein as you ask for trouble. What 
better training can you offer your will than to 
say to it, "My boy, I'm going to take you to- 
day into a whirlpool of temptation that will 
blister you! I don't expect you to come off 
with much credit. You are a poor, feeble 
thing, and I shall not be too badly disap- 
pointed if you fall to pieces under this test. 
But don't fall down altogether. Leave me 
something at least that I can remember with 
some satisfaction later." Treating yourself in 



48 WILL-POWER 

this way as two distinct personalities you will 
be astonished to note that the part of you 
which represents your will during the test 
which you have arranged for its undoing really 
does act as if moved by an intelligence other 
than your own, keeping up the sport of your 
humor, perhaps, but certainly giving you no 
reason to be ashamed of its swift appreciation 
of the conditions of a test. By no means 
should you expect that a man changes his 
nature in a day or a month. He does not. 
But you will notice in yourself all the symp- 
toms of a radical change of nature from 
month to month, and to put this point be- 
yond possibility of doubt we suggest that 
you keep a daily journal of the results of 
these experiments and exercises and make 
careful note therein of what befalls, avoiding 
reading back in this journal except that single 
entry which corresponds to the day of the 
month thirty days back. In this way you 
would have every day an opportunity of sens- 
ing from the entry of a month earlier about 
how you stood in the matter of steady prog- 
ress. Understand now that so far from flee- 
ing from temptation, or falling prone before 
it, you are looking for it for the purpose of 
proving that you have the will to withstand 
it. You may fall after all. Don't let that dis- 
courage you. You have taken the sting from 
defeat if you have made a point of addressing 
yourself in a tone of remonstrance as dictated 
above, and though you fail once, and again 
fail, you will not fail the third time. You 
will succeed in the end, no matter how severe 



WILL-POWER 49 

your pet temptation may be, because you are 
grounded in the essentials of success here and 
now. Because you are doing this thing for a 
test of your power newly won, newly bought, 
and this new power will not fail you when you 
seriously put it to the test. This is only a 
game you are playing with yourself, but it is a 
very earnest game for you, and the stakes are 
the highest possible, the mastery of a man's 
own soul. If you have not realized it thus 
far realize it now, that your will is YOU, a 
part of the soul of you, the immortal part of 
you that carries you through the ages that are 
to come, brightening with its ray or darkening 
iwith its shadow that divine mind of you 
which is your individuality through eternity. 
This is a phase of training of the will that we 
do not touch upon because it is out of place 
in a book devoted to the elemental steps of 
will-training for success in business. But it 
is none the less a fact though we do not speak 
of it. Returning to the practice of your exer- 
cise, take pains to perform daily at least one 
task that you hate doing. Choose at least once 
daily to make yourself do something you do 
not want to do. This is self-discipline. There 
is no other discipline that is worth its salt 
except this. Do the thing you do not want to 
do, because you thereby prove your own con- 
trol of your wishes. Do it without any fuss 
or noise. Do it as a matter of routine duty. 
That is the way to build will. The only way. 
That is going ahead to some purpose. That 
is making speed. Let us have speed about this 
thing. There is no need to spend five years 



50 WILL-POWER 

in accomplishing something that you can do 
in one. There is no reason why you should 
not produce results from our system of will- 
training after one year of application that 
would seem to you today looking forward that 
space of time as something highly to be de- 
sired. You should in one year change the 
plane of vibration for yourself from failure to 
success, and this is the way by which the 
change is effected. 

FIFTH EXERCISE IN MEDITATION 

I appeal from your customs. I must be myself. I 
cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. If 
you can love me for what I am, we shall be the hap- 
pier. If you cannot,- I will still seek to deserve that 
you should. I will not hide my tastes or aversions. 
I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will 
do strongly before the sun and moon whatever inly 
rejoices me and the heart appoints. If you are noble, 
I will love you; if you are not, I will not hurt you 
and myself by hypocritical attentions. — Emerson. 

If you are tru'e, but not in the same truth with me, 
cleave to your companions ; I will seek my own. I 
do this not selfishly but humbly and truly. It is alike 
your interest, and mine, and all men's, however long 
we have dwelt in lies, to live in truth. Do'es this 
sound harsh today? You will soon love what is 
dedicated by your nature as well as mine, and if we 
follow the truth it will bring us out safe at last. — 
Emerson. 

I have my own stern claims and perfect circle. It 
denies the name of duty to many offices that are called 
duties. But if I can discharge its debts it enables me 
to dispense with the popular code. If anyone imagines 
that this law is lax, let him keep its commandment one 
day. — Emerson. 

And truly it demands something godlike in him who 
has cast off the common motives of humanity and has 



WILL-POWER 51 

ventured to trust himself for a taskmaster. High be 
his heart, faithful his will, clear his sight, that he may 
in good earnest be doctrine, society, law, to himself, 
that a simple purpose may be to him as strong as iron 
necessity is to others ! — Emerson. 

If any man consider the present aspects of what is 
call'ed by distinction Society, he will see the need of 
these ethics. The sinew and heart of man seem to be 
drawn out, and we are become timorous, desponding 
whimperers. — Emerson. 

We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of 
death, and afraid of each other. Our age yields no. 
great and perfect persons. We want men and women 
who shall renovate life and our social state, but we 
s*ee that most natures are insolvent, cannot satisfy their 
own wants, have an ambition out of all proportion to 
their practical force and do lean and beg day and night 
continually. Our housekeeping is mendicant, our arts, 
our occupations, our marriages, our religion, we have 
not chosen, but Society has chosen for us. We are 
parlor soldiers. We shun the rugged battle of fate, 
where strength is born. — Emerson. 

If our young men miscarry in their first enterprises 
they lose all heart. If the young merchant fails men 
say he is ruined. * * * A sturdy lad from New 
Hampshire or Vermont, who in turn tries all the pro- 
fessions, who teams it, farms, peddles, keeps a school, 
preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a 
township, and so forth, in successive years, and always 
like a cat falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these 
city dolls. He walks abreast with his days and feels no 
shame in not "studying a profession/' for he does not 
postpone his life, but lives already. He has not one 
chance, but a hundred chances. — Emerson. 

Let a Stoic open the resources of man and tell men 
they are not leaning willows, but can and must detach 
themselves ; that with the exercise of self-trust, new 
powers shall appear ; that a man is the word made flesh, 
born to shed healing to the nations; that he should be 
ashamed of our compassion, and that the moment he 
acts from himself, tossing the laws, the books, idolatries 
and customs out of the window, we pity him no more, 
but thank and revere him; — and that teacher shall re- 



52 WILL-POWER 

store the life of man to splendor and make his name 
dear to all history. — Emerson. 

Prayer that craves a particular commodity, anything 
less than all good, is vicious. Prayer is the contempla- 
tion of the facts of life from the highest point of view. 
It is the soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul. It 
is the spirit of God pronouncing his works good. But 
prayer as a means to effect a private end is meanness 
and theft. * * * As soon as the man is at one with 
God, he will not beg. He will then see prayer in all 
action. The prayer of the farmer kneeling in his field 
to weed it, the prayer of the rower kneeling with the 
stroke of his oar, are true prayers.— Emerson. 



CHAPTER VI 

SELF-DISCIPLINE 

* Notice that this system of will-training is 
the reverse of the system of popular education 
in practice throughout the world. The scholar 
is required to submit himself to certain wise 
rules inhibiting his freedom of choice. He is 
told that he must read, mark, learn and in- 
wardly digest certain books for his future ad- 
vantage. He is told that if he works with 
diligence at his task he will be rewarded by 
prizes now, and by success in his life's calling 
later. He is told that if he does not work 
while in school he will be punished for lazi- 
ness, and that his lack of application to his 
studies will cause grief to his parents. Educa- 
tion is therefore a system of rewards and pun- 
ishments. It is a system of disciplines en- 
forced, but it seems to us that it lacks the 
essential thing in all education which is capa- 
ble of developing the best in the scholar, 
namely, the implanting of the desire of self- 
discipline. Clearly, unless the scholar has wit 
enough to understand that discipline is valu- 
able only if it becomes self-discipline by the 
scholar's choice, he will miss the point and 
worth of education altogether. The argument 
of the schools in this matter is that by submit- 
ting to discipline the scholar is taught to con- 
trol himself, but many scholars miss this point 

53 



54 WILL-POWER 

entirely and dislike school and educational 
methods generally because they dislike disci- 
pline. They hate compulsion and authority. 

We suggest that a method or system that 
works well for adults will work equally well if 
not better for the young, and we therefore ex- 
press the hope that we shall some day find 
our schools and colleges alive to the fact that 
the training of the will by self-discipline is the 
foundation of character, and that such train- 
ing constitutes the most vitally important in- 
struction which can be offered to the young, 
since it deals with the very stuff of which char- 
acter is formed. 

We should therefore abolish alike the sys- 
tem of rewards and the system of punishments 
from our schools, substituting in their place 
the system of free choice. The aim would be 
to interest the scholar in his or her personal 
development of character by such rules and 
practice as have been already made clear in 
these previous chapters. The scholar should 
early lay to heart the lesson that his reward 
is his own self-improvement carried forward 
of his own choice. The prize for him is the 
prize of life, the best that life has to offer. 
The prize is success. Failure on his part to 
pursue his studies along the lines laid down 
does not mean punishment by authority, but 
punishment of himself by himself. His pun- 
ishment is lack of success. In the long run it 
is evident that this is indeed the enduring pun- 
ishment that falls upon the idle scholar, and 
much would be gained if this fact were made 
clear at the start of the race instead of at its 



WILL-POWER 55 

close. The scholar should be taught that the 
building of his will and character is the vital 
part of his education, that this work can be 
done by himself alone, that he cannot get it 
from books, that he cannot get it from pre- 
cept and example, that its acquirement is due 
to his own choice, his own effort, his own self- 
discipline. Such teaching as this would bear 
immediate fruit in the development of self- 
reliance in the scholar. He -would lean not 
upon others but upon himself. He would seek 
his reward not in the prize, medal, or diploma 
at the end of the term, but in the improvement 
of himself physically and mentally for the bat- 
tle of life upon which he will shortly enter. 
Such improvement will constitute his best 
equipment for the struggle. Sending a college- 
trained boy into the world today to make a 
success of his life is about as sensible as send- 
ing an army into the field without ammuni- 
tion. The value of education is to fit the youth 
to do his best. Modern education is of little 
help to him. 

All healthy things are happy. Emerson says 
that all healthy things are sweet-tempered. 
It is very important that you should never 
forget this. The strong-willed man is quite 
often the careless man in this regard. He is 
not ill-tempered; he is well-poised, and well- 
poised people are secure against gusts of 
temper: but he does not give attention to the 
effect of his moods upon those with whom he 
comes in close contact in office or home. It 
will be very easy for you to watch yourself 
closely in this matter, now that your attention 



56 WILL-POWER 

has been called to the point. Each of us exerts 
influence upon others. Observe whether your 
influence upon those you meet is what it 
should be. If it is not, look for the fault in 
yourself. Rules of conduct in this system are 
few, easy to remember, and easy to follow. 
They are : Be kind, be cheerful, and be still. 

One of your earliest duties in this work of 
self-improvement by self-discipline is to pass 
along to others some of the benefit you are re- 
ceiving. The most effective way of doing this 
is by radiating good-will silently. Thoughts 
are things, and your thoughts directed by your 
will have a dynamic force which reaches out- 
side of yourself. Cultivate in yourself there- 
fore the habit of kindly thought. It is said 
that Nature abhors a vacuum. You should 
abhor in yourself a mind empty of good 
thought. Make of your mind a well-weeded 
garden, to use our former simile. You are do- 
ing just that thing, cultivating, ceaselessly 
cultivating. 

Learn to distinguish between the good and 
bad critic which belong to every active mind. 
The one is helpful to all right action on your 
part ; the other hinders by disparagement. The 
latter is that base voice of the recesses of the 
mind which is responsible for the despairs of 
the soul. This is the voice that advises you 
to drop all effort at self-improvement because 
it is a silly business and makes you feel like a 
prig. It warns you that you will get nowhere. 
It counsels flight. It reminds you how right 
it was before when it prophesied the early 
death of certain of your former enthusiasms. 



WILL-POWER 



57 




58 WILL-POWER 

It is a boding, depressing voice. Your friends, 
if they knew what you were attempting in this 
case, would tell you that this voice is the 
voice of Reason. Not so, however. It is not 
Reason that counsels you darkly. Reason is 
alert and active, ready for any effort. This 
voice is sluggish in its nature. It loves the 
old ways, the old rut of the mind. It hates to 
be disturbed and upset. Your business is to 
crush this voice out of the mind. You will 
have some trouble with it, but it has only such 
force or power as you allow it. You can 
strangle it effectively by encouraging the voice 
of the good critic to make itself clear to your 
consciousness. This will be another exercise 
of the governing will, this silencing of the evil 
counsellor by filling the attention with posi- 
tive, inspiring, healthy thoughts. A positive 
and a negative thought cannot occupy the 
same mind at the same time. You must get 
rid of the negative by using the positive. 

To assist you to achieve this radiantly posi- 
tive condition of mind as your normal mental 
state you should make frequent use of the fol- 
lowing affirmations, repeating them daily and 
nightly, until the habit is formed and they 
become a part of you : "I AM HAPPINESS : 
I AM POWER: I AM SUCCESS: I AM 
HEALTH: I AM PROSPERITY: I AM 
STRENGTH OF WILL: I AM VICTORI- 
OUS ENERGY: I AM CONCENTRATION: 
I AM POISE: I AM GOODWILL TO 
OTHERS." These affirmations, constantly 
repeated, day by day, impress the subconscious 
mind with their force, and because the mind's 



WILL-POWER 59 

organ, the brain, is built of cells, you are stor- 
ing the brain-cells by this means with right 
thought, or, if you please, with the right food 
for the mind. This right thought not only de- 
velops dynamic power of its own, but it also 
occupies the place previously held by wrong 
thought, ousting it, and taking control. 



SIXTH EXERCISE IN MEDITATION 

Thou canst pass thy life in an "equable flow of hap- 
piness, if thou canst go by the right way, and think 
and act in the right way. These two things are com- 
mon both to- the soul of God and to the soul of man, 
and to the soul of every rational being, not to be 
hindered by another; and to hold good to consist in 
the disposition to justice and the practice of it, and in 
this to let thy desire find its termination. — Aurelius. 

That which does no harm to the state, does no harm 
to the citizen. In the case of every appearance of harm 
apply this rule : if the state is not harmed by this, 
neither am I harmed. But if the state is harmed, thou 
must not be angry with him who does harm to- the 
state. Show him where his error is. — Aurelius. 

Nothing happens to any man which he is not formed 
by nature to bear. The same things happen to another, 
and either because he does not see that they have hap- 
pened, or because he would show a great spirit, he is 
firm and remains unharmed. It is a shame then that 
ignorance and conceit should be stronger than wis- 
dom. — Aurelius. 

In one respect man is the nearest thing to me, so far 
as I must do good to men and endure them. But so 
far as some men make themselves obstacles to my 
proper acts, man becomes to me one of the things 
which are indifferent, no less than the sun or wind 
or a wild beast. Now it is true that these may impede 
my action, but they are no impediments to my affects 
and disposition, which have the power of acting condi- 
tionally and changing; for the mind converts and 
changes 'every hindrance to its activity into an aid; 



60 WILL-POWER 

and so that which is a hindrance is made a further- 
ance to an act; and that which is an obstacle on the 
road helps us on this road. — Aurelius. 

Reverence that which is best in the universe; and 
this is that which makes use of all things and directs 
all things. And in like manner also reverence that 
which is best in thyself; and this is of the same kind 
as that. — Aurelius. 

Then you fear hunger, as you suppose. But it is not 
hunger that you fear — youfear you will have no cook, 
nor nobody else to buy victuals for you, nor another 
to take off your boots, nor another to put them on, 
nor others to rub you down, nor others to follow you 
about, so that when you have stripped yourself in the 
bath, and stretched yourself out as if you were cruci- 
fied, you may be rubbed to and fro, and then the rub- 
ber standing by may say, 'Turn him around, give me 
his side, take hold of his head, let me have his 
shoulder"; and then when you leave the bath and go 
home you may shout, "Is no one bringing anything, 
to eat?" and then, "Take away the plates and wipe 
them." This is what you fear — lest you be not able 
to live like a sick man. But learn how those live that 
are in health — slaves and laborers, and true philoso- 
phers; how Socrates lived, who moreover had a wife 
and children ; how Diogenes lived ; how Cleanthes, that 
studied in the schools and drew his own water. If 
you would have these things, they are everywhere to 
be had, and you will live boldly. Boldly in what? In 
that wherein alone it is possible to be bold — in that 
which is faithful, which cannot be hindered, which 
cannot be taken away. But why hast thou made thy- 
self so worthless and useless that no one is willing to 
receive thee into his house or take care of thee? But 
if any utensil were thrown away, and it was sound and 
serviceable, everyone that found it would pick it up 
and think it a gain; but thee no man would pick up, 
nor count anything but damage. So thou canst not so 
much as serve the purpose of a watch-dog, or a cook? 
Why, then, wilt thou still live, being such a man as 
thou art? — Epictetus. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE MAGNETIC MAN OR WOMAN 

We all know people, both men and women, 
who seem to get what they want from life 
without any particular effort on their part. 
The common phrase is that they are lucky. 
There is, of course, no luck in the matter at 
all. When we examine the facts to find the 
cause of the success of these people we find' a 
marked similarity in all the cases of the kind 
of which we have accurate knowledge, a simi- 
larity of manner, a similarity of behavior, a 
similarity of disposition. The distinguishing 
trait of these fortunate ones is an equability 
of temperament, sometimes inborn, sometimes 
acquired by training. They have poise. They 
do not fret, worry, or hurry. What they do, 
and they do much, is done easily, tranquilly. 
The world goes well with them. They are 
popular. We like them. We like to talk with 
them and to be with them. They may vary 
greatly in their stations of life, but whether 
they belong to the higher, lower, or middle 
strata of society, they attract us and we find 
them interesting. 

The foundation of the personal magnetism 
of which these people are possessed consists of 
a firmness of will which shows forth in a calm 
self-confidence that is not assertive. The note 
struck is self-reliance. They throw out with- 

61 



62 WILL-POWER 







ifiWMKH! 










1 ''MJoflfi/ 

IS? IsfeYf ' 


i,:^f;^ r: :£^ : i 


The jflajoneftic DersonaJfty. 



WILL-POWER 63 

out effort an atmosphere of kindliness and de- 
pendableness. They inspire us with trust in 
them. Children and dogs run to them in- 
stinctively without fear. Business men culti- 
vate their acquaintance. They impress others 
by their appearance, but especially by their 
speech. The principle of atractiveness which 
they possess in abundance is the principle of 
strong will, manifesting itself outwardly. 
Disabuse yourself of the idea, if you entertain 
it, as many do, that a strong-willed person is 
therefore arbitrary, dictatorial, or assertive. 
These are the familiar traits of the obstinate 
man, who is usually the combative man. The 
magnetic man or woman is always persuasive. 
They convince, but not by argument. The 
loud debate is not for them. Think for a 
moment of Benjamin Franklin, one of our 
most magnetic men. Never was there a less 
assertive man than he : never a less dogmatic 
man : yet no man won such instant recognition 
of his merit from all classes and nations as he, 
and the court of France confessed the charm 
of his presence as readily as the printer-ap- 
prentices of his native Philadelphia. His sin- 
cerity and charm won him as high place in 
the hearts of foreign diplomatists as his wis- 
dom won for him in the scientific world of 
that day. Truly a man of not unusual gifts 
w T hich had been trained with care to a state of 
highest efficiency. It is not uninteresting to 
remember that in his Autobiography he gives 
in detail a method of self-examination he made 
daily use of which is not unlike the method of 
memory-training given you in this system. 



64 WILL-POWER 

Franklin was pre-eminently a man of strong 
will developed by self-training, faithfully keep- 
ing record of his own advancement and slip- 
pings from the path he had set himself to 
climb. If you have any lingering doubts in 
your mind as to the advantage to you of the 
nightly retrospect of the day's doings, a study 
of Franklin's plan of living will remove them. 
The plan he laid out for himself was more 
elaborate and intricate in detail than the plan 
of this system, but the scheme of each is as 
similar as the purpose. Recalling what Frank- 
lin's method did for Franklin's character you 
should go forward with renewed confidence 
and a firmer resolution to get all the benefits 
offered by faithful carrying through of these 
few and simple exercises. The system is sim- 
ple, but the results are not simple. The mag- 
netic man is the successful man. Personal 
magnetism is the attractive force of the 
trained will. Franklin was magnetic, strong- 
willed and trained by self-discipline. Put two 
and two together in this case and you will see 
that the general law already twice referred to 
is also in operation here. 

Assuming that magnetism is a fluid force 
not unlike electricity in some of its properties, 
it should be necessary to guard against waste 
or leakage of this force. It is necessary. 
Every magnetic woman knows that she gives 
out force to far too many people every day. 
Every magnetic man is conscious of the same 
drain upon his reserve or current, and until 
they have learned how to protect themselves 
against too heavy drafts upon their magnetic 



WILL-POWER 65 

reserves they feel the strain of meeting too 
many people in one day. The rule of self- 
protection in this case is easily grasped, but 
it does not concern you at this time to know it 
because you will not be called upon to use it 
before your first year's practice of these exer- 
cises has ended. By that time you will have 
abundant magnetism, which will stand in need 
of protection. When that time arrives you 
will be told what to do. At present the im- 
portant thing is to show you what you must 
avoid doing even while your first year's train- 
ing in self-discipline is proceeding. We call 
it "stopping the leaks. " Avoid jerky, sudden 
movements, fidgeting feet or hands, for the 
same reason that you avoid jerky, disconnected 
thoughts, because they are evidence of lack of 
control. Avoid attempts to influence others 
until your own thoughts have been brought 
safely under the control of your own will, the 
golden rule in this case being that before you 
are fit to govern others you must have learned 
to govern yourself. Avoid the very human 
weakness of talking about these things, espe- 
cially about your advance in will-power, to 
either friends or acquaintances, if your con- 
versation is intended to draw from them any 
praise. Keep the rule of silence on these mat- 
ters, except in the case of others who are tak- 
ing up this work as you are taking it up. In 
such case discussion is good for all. Keep 
faith with yourself in things of least moment. 
Better break your word to others than to your- 
self. A promise made to yourself is sacred 
for exactly the reason that no penalty attaches 



66 WILL-POWER 

to its breaking. Anger, worry, and fear are 
three leaks. Avoid them. You have been told 
how. There is no room for any of these weak- 
ening emotions in the mind that is filled with 
active, positive thought. The affirmations pre- 
viously given are warranted to stop all leaks 
if you will use them as often and as positively 
as they are needed. Look for the bright side 
of every unpleasant happening. There is al- 
ways more than one way of regarding a cir- 
cumstance. Find that view of the matter 
which is best for your mind to hold. Have 
you just missed your train? Waste no time 
in irritability, but seize the fifteen minutes of 
leisure thus given you to practice one or more 
exercises, breathing, visualizing, affirming, as 
you please, remembering that the trained mind 
seeks and finds profit for itself in misery and 
discomfort. It was Epictetus, that wise old 
Stoic, who said that there were always two 
ways of taking hold of anything with the mind, 
a hard way and an easy way. Look for the 
way that brings the best thoughts with it. It 
is not always apparent. Your business is to 
find it. You know how. When found, use it 
to your advantage. You know how. Make it 
an ambition to say to yourself in the morning, 
"Today I resolve to watch my thoughts so con- 
stantly that I shall have nothing glaring in the 
way of failure to reproach myself with at the 
nightly review of the day's happenings/' Try 
the record. It is worth taking pains about. It 
the record. It is work taking pains about. It 
is worth while. Absolutely it is worth while. 
Pain and sickness are things you should be 



WILL-POWER 67 

tender of when they happen to others. You 
need not be so tender of them when they be- 
fall you. Never affirm a negative. Do not 
deny that you have a tooth-ache, if you have 
one, but see a dentist. Avoid the foolishness 
of denying the existence and reality of pain. 
While you are spirit clothed in flesh, that is to 
say, while you are a human being, you are 
bound by the laws of flesh or matter, and if 
your tooth or head aches there is a material 
reason for it. 

SEVENTH EXERCISE IN MEDITATION 

Discontent is the want of self-reliance: it is in- 
firmity of will. Regret calamities if you can thereby 
help the sufferer; if not, attend your own work and 
already the evil begins to be repaired. Our sympathy 
is just as base. We come to them who weep foolishly 
and sit down and cry for company, instead of impart- 
ing to them truth and health in rough electric shocks, 
putting them once more in communication with their 
own reason. — Emerson. 

The secret of fortune is joy in our hands. — Emerson. 

Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self- 
helping man. For him all doors are flung wide ; him all 
tongues greet, all honors crown, all eyes follow with 
desire. Our love goes out to him and embraces him 
because he did not need it. We solicitously and apolo- 
getically caress and celebrate him because he held on 
his way and scorned our disapprobation. — Emerson. 

Insist on yourself; never imitate. * * * That 
which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach 
him. No man yet knows what it is, nor can, till that 
person has exhibited it. Where is the master who 
could have taught Shakespeare? Where is the master 
who could have instructed Franklin, or Washington, or 
Bacon, or Newton? Every great man is a unique. — 
Emerson. 

Abide in the simple and noble regions of thy life, 



68 WILL-POWER 

obey thy heart and thou shalt reproduce the Foreworld 
again. — Emerson. 

All men plume themselves on the improvement of 
society, and no man improves. — Emerson. 

Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one 
side as it gains on the other. It undergoes continual 
changes; it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is christian- 
ized^ it is rich, it is scientific; but this change is not 
amelioration. For everything that is given something 
is taken. Society acquires new arts and loses old in- 
stincts. * * * The civilized man has built a coach, 
but has lost the use of his feet. He is supported on 
crutches, but lacks so much support of muscle. — Emer- 
son. 

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing 
can bring you peace but the triumph of principles. — 
Emerson. 

He who knows that power is inborn, that he is weak 
because he has looked for good out of him and else- 
where, and, so perceiving, throws himself unhesitat- 
ingly on his thought, instantly rights himself, stands 
in the erect position, commands his limbs, works mira- 
cles; just as a man who stands on his feet is stronger 
than a man who stands on his head. — Emerson. 

All things are moral. That soul which within us is 
a sentiment, outside of us is a law.— Emerson. 

Proverbs, like the sacred books of each nation, are 
the sanctuary of the intuitions. That which the dron- 
ing world, chained to appearances, will not allow the 
realist to say in his own words, it will suffer him to 
say in proverbs without contradiction. And this law 
of laws, which the pulpit, the senate and the college 
deny, is hourly preached in all markets and work-shops 
by flights of proverbs, whose teaching is as true and 
as omnipresent as that of birds and flies. — Emerson. 

All infractions of love and equity in our social rela- 
tions are speedily punished. They are punished by fear. 
Whilst I stand in simple relations to my fellow-man, 
I have no displeasure in meeting him. We meet as 
water meets water, or as two currents of air mix, with 
perfect diffusion and interpenetration of nature. But 
as soon as there is any departure from simplicity and 
attempt at halfness, or good for me that is not good 
for him, my neighbor feels the wrong; he shrinks from 






WILL-POWER 69 

me as far as I have shrunk from him; his eyes no 
longer seek mine ; there is war between us ; there is 
hate in him and fear in me. — Emerson. 

You must pay at last your own debt. — Emerson. 

Benefit is the end of nature. But for every benefit 
which you receive, a tax is levied. He is great who 
confers the most benefits. He is base, — and that is the 
one base thing in the universe, — to receive favors and 
render none. — Emerson. 

Commit a crime and the 'earth is made of glass. — 
Emerson. 

Every man in his lifetime needs to thank his faults. 
* * * like the wounded oyster, he mends his shell 
with pearl. — Emerson. 



CHAPTER VIII 

DYNAMIC THINKING 

Forty years ago Prentice Mulford, first of 
New Thought writers, made use of the telling 
phrase, "Thoughts are Things. " It is, per- 
haps, being a little overworked. It may have 
prompted that fine old naturalist, John Bur- 
roughs, to write his famous poem of which 
the refrain runs, "Serene I fold my hands and 
wait, for lo! my own shall come to me." 
There is nothing the matter with this philoso- 
phy, except that it is not true. Outside of 
that there is nothing the matter. As a poem 
it is a thing of beauty. Never permit yourself 
to shirk facts. One hundred millions of 
Hindoos have folded their hands and waited 
for nigh a hundred years, while a handful of 
Englishmen who knew the meaning of action 
took charge of their affairs for them and ad- 
ministered their country to the advantage 
of England. Twice this number of Chinese 
have folded their hands and waited while the 
centuries passed, offering fat pickings of ter- 
ritory and harborage to any pilfering pirate 
among the nations who might cast an eye that 
way. Because of this practical application of 
Mr. Burroughs' philosophy, China is today 
calling upon strong, peaceful nations, such as 
the United States for help to rid herself of the 
robbers who have despoiled her. She is big 

70 



WILL-POWER 



71 




"Serene I sCold my... 

bands and w&Vt-^ao. 

«.^for lo! my own . .. 

.snail come to mcA 

■ mi 11 d>M8La ■■ r — adBS^aafl 



BsaaBBBtaCSk: 



« 



72 WILL-POWER 

enough and strong enough and old enough to 
help herself. Let her think straight and back 
her thought with action and she will lift her- 
self out of the mire. Thoughts are things, in- 
deed, in the sense that as a man thinketh, so 
is he, but they do not take the place of doing. 
They lay the foundation for right doing. They 
do not excuse you for sitting still and waiting 
for something to happen. Things do not hap- 
pen for your waiting. They happen for your 
compulsion. Events wait upon your will. 
Your will is action or thought in action. 

Thoughts are things also in this sense that 
whatever is happening to you now, whatever 
conditions surround you, are the result of your 
own thinking. If you think failure, if you 
think sorrow, if you think sickness, you at- 
tract to yourself conditions of failure, condi- 
tions of sorrow, conditions of sickness. To 
the contrary, if you think happiness, if you 
think joy, if you think success, you attract 
these conditions to you and put yourself men- 
tally on their plane. Like is atracted to like. 
If you are not satisfied with the trend of your 
life today, *if you would change it, it is in your 
power to change it. The change depends upon 
your changing your thought. Think success 
and it will come to you, not because your 
thought has drawn it to you from the ends of 
the earth while you sat with folded hands 
waiting for its arrival, but because your 
change of thought from a depressing con- 
sciousness of failure to a strongly positive 
demand for better living conditions is a draft 
on the bank of the Source of Supply that is 



WILL-POWER 73 

worth its face value. It is a sight draft, 
payable on demand, because, and only because, 
your change of thought has made you a dif- 
ferent person from what you were. It has put 
snap into you that was not there before. It 
has made you think to a purpose as you never 
thought before. It has opened ways to you 
to which your eyes were shut before. It has 
lifted you out of inaction and despondency by 
lifting you out of your chair and stirring you 
into action. It has caused you to impress peo- 
ple as you never impressed them before. It 
has, in a word, made you help yourself, and 
has shown you how to help yourself. In this 
sense thoughts are things. Remember that 
your right thought attitude must be a reflec- 
tion of your right physical attitude, calm-eyed, 
firm-mouthed, self-reliant, confident. Prac- 
ticing this thought-tone constantly will very 
swiftly lift your thought-vibrations to the 
plane of success, and things will then begin to 
happen. See that you are ready for them when 
they begin to happen. 

Arnold Bennett counsels regular reading of 
Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius to all those 
who are beginning the study of self-improve- 
ment by training the mind to obey the orders 
of the will, but Epictetus is not Emerson. 
Above and beyond all teachers, Emerson is the 
Guide. Exactly suited to your needs also is 
a good book on Yogi methods of breathing. 
There is always one best book on any subject. 
The best book on breathing is The Hindu- 
Yogi Science of Breath, by Ramacharaka, for 
sale by The Yogi Publication Society, A-1000, 



74 WILL-POWER 

Masonic Temple, Chicago, 111. It has the ad- 
ditional merit of being quite inexpensive. 
This is certainly the best thing of its kind in 
print, and will be a great help to you. Also 
you will need clear, positive examples of suc- 
cess achieved by right thinking and right do- 
ing. These things you will find in New 
Thought, the monthly magazine. 

The writer served two years and one month 
in the United States Army, during the dis- 
turbance with Germany, and he voices the 
dumb gratitude of a million hearts in saying a 
word of tribute to the Salvation Army. Apart 
from their service in the field entirely, forget- 
ting the dough-nuts and the coffee, he would 
ask you to think of what this organization has 
done for the derelict and the castaway in the 
slums of the great cities. What genius among 
them was it who first struck out the phrase, 
"A Man May be Down, but He's Never Out !" 
This is a wonder-phrase. In how many thou- 
sands of despondent men and women, think 
you, have these fine strong words waked again 
the glow of that self-respect which they never 
thought to know again ? If you are one of the 
world's failures this message is as vital to you 
as to any waif of the streets, and you will get 
only great good from repeating it to yourself. 
It is an affirmation in itself, and complete in 
itself. It carries in itself the message of New 
Thought to the world of failures. There are 
no failures, except such as are too broken by 
the conflict to lift up their heads. "A man may 
be down, but he's never out." It should be 
carved in marble, graven on bronze, em- 



WILLPOWER 




ipvroaj> mzy be down 
. <5 uf b e'a ft ever ouK » 



76 WILL-POWER 

broidered in gay letters of silk on our proudest 
banners. It should never be forgotten of men 
while the world endures. 

When a hive of bees is sure that there is 
danger to the future of the hive by dying out 
of queen-larvae, it meets the difficulty by 
turning worker-larvae into queen-larvae by 
feeding a selected few a special food which 
apiarists have called "Royal Jelly/' There is 
no need of a special creation or introduction 
of super-creations; the bees convert the bar- 
ren sister into the great queen by a simple 
process of superior nourishment. So, when a 
man or woman, dissatisfied with conditions or 
attainments, eager to advance, desirous of im- 
provement, seeking for health, happiness and 
prosperity to make these good things their own 
and have a share of them in their own lives, 
search out the way to this change, they are 
not a little astonished to find that the miracle 
is wrought by the simple process of feeding 
them the Royal Jelly of Right Thought. No 
special creation of a superman is needed. We 
carry in ourselves, hidden usually from our- 
selves, the essential powers that lift us from 
the depths. If you do not like yourself, change 
yourself. You have the power. 

EIGHTH EXERCISE IN MEDITATION 

Love, and you shall be loved. — Emerson. 

Our strength grows out of our weakness. — Emerson. 

Blame is safer than praise. I hate to be defended 
in a newspaper. As long as all that is said is said 
against me, I feel a certain assurance of success. But 
as soon as honeyed words of praise are spoken for me 
I feel as one that lies unprotected before his enemies. 



WILL-POWER 77 

In general, every evil to which we do not succumb is 
a benefactor. — Emerson. 

As the Sandwich Islander believes that the strength 
and valor of the enemy he kills passes into himself, so 
we gain the strength of the temptations we resist. — 
Emerson. 

M'en suffer all their life long under the foolish super- 
stition that they can be cheated. But it is as impossible 
for a man to be cheated by any one but himself, as for 
a thing to be and not to be at the same time. There 
is a third sil'ent party to all our bargains. The nature 
and soul of things takes on itself the guaranty of the 
fulfilment of every contract so that honest service can- 
not come to loss. If you serve an ungrateful master, 
serve him the more. ^ Put God in your debt. Every 
stroke shall be repaid. The longer the payment is with- 
holden, the better for you; for compound interest on 
compound interest is the rate and usage of this ex- 
chequer. — Emerson. 

There is no tax on the good of virtue, for that is 
the incoming of God, himself, or absolute existence, 
without any comparative. Material good has its tax, 
and if it come without desert or sweat, has no root in 
me, and the next wind will blow it away. But all the 
good of nature is the soul's, and may be had if paid 
for in nature's lawful coin, that is, by labor which the 
heart and head allow. I no longer wish to meet a good 
I do not earn. — Emerson. 

No man ever stated his griefs as lightly as he might. 
Allow for exaggeration in the most patient and sorely 
ridden hack that ever was driven. For it is only the 
finite that has wrought and suffered; the infinite lies 
stretched in smiling repose. — Emerson. 

People represent virtue as a struggle, and take to 
themselves great airs upon their attainment. * * * 
We love characters in proportion as they are impulsive 
and spontaneous. The less a man thinks or knows 
about his virtues the better we like him. — Emerson. 

Belief and love, — a believing love will relieve us of 
a vast load of care. — Emerson. 

There is a soul at the centre of nature and over the 
will of every man, so that^none of us can wrong the 
universe. It has so infused its strong enchantment into 
nature that we prosper when we accept its advice, and 



78 WILL-POWER 

when we struggle to wound its creatures our hands are 
glued to our sides, or they beat our own breasts. The 
whole course of things goes to teach us faith. — Emer- 
son. 

We need only obey. There is guidance for each of 
us, and by lowly listening we shall hear the right word. 
— Emerson. 

For you there is a reality, a fit place and congenial 
duties. Place yourself in the middle of the stream of 
power and wisdom which animates all whom it floats, 
and you are without effort impelled to truth, to right 
and a perfect contentment. Then you put all gainsay- 
ers in the wrong. Then you are the world, the measure 
of right, truth, and beauty. If we would not be mar- 
plots with our miserable interferences, the work, the 
society, letters, arts, science, religion of men would go 
on far better than now, and the heaven predicted from 
the beginning of the world, and still predicted from the 
bottom of the heart, would organize itself, as do now 
the rose and the air and the sun. — Emerson. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE LAW OF FINANCIAL SUCCESS 

Once more it is necessary to offer you a 
sort of apology for the simplicity of this mat- 
ter. We told you, however, at the beginning, 
that the general law which underlay the build- 
ing of will underlay also the acquiring of per- 
sonal magnetism and the achieving of suc- 
cess. You can hardly blame us for making 
your labors easy for you. We might, and 
without difficulty could, pad out this book to 
seven times its bulk in elucidating these mat- 
ters, but surely that would be gain to neither. 
Recall the reproach the little maid offered to 
Naaman the Syrian, after he "turned and went 
away in a rage. "My father," said she, "if the 
prophet had required some hard thing of thee, 
wouldst thou not have done it? 'How much 
more when he saith unto thee, 'Wash and be 
clean' I" Well for Naaman that he heeded 
this friendly, pleading voice. We repeat, the 
process of this system is simplicity itself, but 
the results are by no means simple. The Law 
of Financial Success, despite its high-sound- 
ing title, is exactly the same thing as the 
method of will-building, which you have had 
clearly set before you. How could it possibly 
be anything else? Put yourself in the right 
attitude of mind to make yourself a success, 
which, as you know now, is done by right 

79 



80 WILL-POWER 

thinking, and it follows logically that you 
make yourself wealthy, if wealth is what you 
want. Nothing else could follow but this. 

Reverting again to our former example of 
the multi-millionaire type, John D. Rocke- 
feller, you will find in his autobiography that 
he was ever of a saving disposition. Not for 
John D. the transient satisfaction of blowing 
his money with other good fellows and free 
spenders of his own age. He early acquired 
the habit of spending less than he earned, and 
this alone, if you have ever practiced it, is a 
training of the will. It is a good, sound habit. 
Franklin practiced it. Every man who has 
ever made any money at all, and held on to it 
after making it, has always been able to save. 
""It is not quite as simple a thing as it sounds. 
It requires the power to deny yourself not only 
the pleasure of purchasing something you 
would like to have, but the power to deny 
yourself the pleasure of assisting others, and 
this is often the more difficult refusal of the 
^ ' two. Any man who, earning two thousand 

dollars a year, has saved one-fourth of this 
sum yearly and put it safely away in a sav- 
ings-bank, knows far better than we can tell 
him how sharply he has been beset from time 
to time by desire to aid this one or that one 
to the extent of making a draft upon this nest- 
egg in the bank. We will say, after a ripe 
experience, that it takes more savage grit to 
save money than to make it. It takes more 
hard will-power to deny than to give. No 
training in the world is more valuable to you 
than this simple thing, that you train your- 



WILL-POWER 




DeoyiD&^be Impulse To 6ive 



82 WILL-POWER 

self to deny yourself the spending of as much 
as you earn. Make a beginning at once. Set 
about it today. There is in many men, how- 
ever, a joy in the sport of making money which 
is accompanied by a scorn of money itself, as 
something of little worth in comparison with 
the pleasure of giving it away. This is not a 
sordid ostentation of generosity, but a very 
real indifference to dollars and cents. It is an 
unsound feeling, because it overlooks the fact 
that it requires strong will to deny yourself 
the pleasure of yielding to the impulse to give. 
It is a thoughtless impulse. Wisely directed 
thought, governing this impulse, would refuse 
it. Your business is to act in accordance with 
wisely directed thought, and to shun action 
begotten of impulse. Therefore, save your 
money. 

We have a deep distrust of those systems of 
mental and physical training which pile exer- 
cise on exercise until both mind and body re- 
volt from the task ahead. The essence of suc- 
cess in this business of will-training is that 
the student weary not in the doing. If you 
lose interest in the job you fail of results be- 
cause yon do not put conviction into your 
affirmations, and you do not give the sharp at- 
tention necessary to direct the thought in 
breathing, thinking and visualizing. You pass 
by certain exercises as too much bother and 
thereby permit a break in your planned rout- 
ine. This is not fatal, of course, because the 
practices may be interrupted for weeks at a 
time and renewed later with nothing but bene- 
fit, but there should not be any breaks at all 



WILL-POWER 83 

in the routine. It is a weakness to permit them. 
When you have once begun this work we do 
not expect you ever to lose interest in it. 
The results alone, we think, will hold you 
steadfast to the job. The work that is laid 
out here will keep you occupied for one year. 
You should give not less than one year's time 
to the exercises in their order, that you may 
have a solid foundation on which to build 
from year to year. There is nothing set be- 
fore you here which should weary you physi- 
cally or mentally. If this system dealt with a 
laborious training of the mind by the memoriz- 
ing of rules, precepts, and examples, it would 
not be surprising if you shirked the burden at 
times, and even grew to hate the whole thing. 
But here you have no strain or fatigue to con- 
tend against, and we feel that your interest 
will not flag. We are only human, all of us, 
and there will be days when you will be less 
keen than at other times ; you will have your 
periods of boredom, possibly, but on this point 
w T e can offer you the comforting assurance 
that such periods of distaste will grow less 
and less frequent as you proceed. We count 
upon the results to feed your interest con- 
tinuously, sufficiently at least to prevent you 
from skipping the work altogether for a day 
here and a week there. There should be no 
skips. 

Inasmuch as our system is devised to hold 
you to your word to yourself, and make your 
will of some account, you might feel justified 
if you fulfilled the task to the letter, but passed 
up the spirit. That will not do at all. There 



• 



84 WILL-POWER 

must be none of the martyr, there must be no 
self-pity, about this work. What has control 
of moods to do with any such weakness as 
feeling ill-used because you are keeping a 
promise made to yourself? Let us have a 
cheerful face at all times, and a willing enthu- 
siasm, with nothing grudging about it. This 
cheerfulness and unfailing good-temper, is, 
you will recollect, one of the special features 
of the training. Keep before you the fact 
that you are engaged in the work of improv- 
ing the running of a very important machine, 
the most delicate and finely adjusted in the 
world, as Arnold Bennett has said, that this 
machine belongs to you, and that its smooth 
running and general efficiency is quite the 
most important work you have ever under- 
taken. Understand that you only can handle 
this machine, and that a system which teaches 
you to get the best service from it is worth 
some time and some effort, some attention 
and some loyal performance, particularly as 
your comfort, your happiness, your health and 
your success are bound up in the machine, 
and are dependent upon your knowledge of 
how to make it work for you at its best under 
all conditions. The knowledge is here for 
your using, in such form that you can at once 
apply it, with assurance that nothing but 
benefit to yourself and your fortunes can re- 
sult from the work. We count upon you for 
one year's faithful trial of this system, and 
shall be prepared to offer you an advanced 
course along similar lines about January, 1922. 



CHAPTER X 

CONCLUSION 

The present handy little volume is the 
first of a series of four books which will 
be published by New Thought, before May, 
1921. These books will all be written by 
the same hand, and maintain uniformity 
in size and style of binding. Number 2 
of the series will be entitled, "The Bio- 
chemistry of Schuessler, A System of Treat- 
ment to Maintain the Human Body and Mind 
in Health and to Cure all curable Physical and 
Mental Diseases by Use of the Eleven Tissue 
Remedies or Cell-Foods discovered and first 
used by Dr. Wilhelm Heinrich Schuessler at 
Oldenburg, Germany/' The need for this book 
at this time seems to us very great. It will 
be written with the intention of putting into 
the hands of the layman a method of body and 
mind treating, building, and repairing, from 
infancy to old age, in order that the care of 
his health may rest with the person most 
concerned. It would seem a matter not to be 
debated that a man should know his own 
body best. It would seem to be an absurdity 
on the face of it that we have made a habit of 
handing over the care of our own bodies to 
someone else, and paying him for attending 
to them. It is doubtful if any man can know 
anything at all about another man's body and 

85 



86 WILL-POWER 

mind. It is at least reasonable that it is a 
man's duty to care for his own health. In 
fairness to Dr. Schuessler's memory — he died 
in 1898 — it should be added that he was a 
regular practitioner, and that he wrote his 
book, Biochemistry, for the use of physicians 
only. The idea of a layman practicing Bio- 
chemistry on himself and family never oc- 
curred to him. But times have changed since 
the good doctor lived, and in presenting to his 
fellows a system of medicine which comes 
nearer being a science than anything so far 
known, he unwittingly conferred a favor upon 
mankind at large. 

In a nut-shell the theory of disease and its 
treatment propounded and practiced by Dr. 
Schuessler is that since man is compounded 
of earth and air, and was called into being by 
the activities of plants, his body partakes of 
the mechanism of plant-life to a remarkable 
degree, and depends upon its mineral constitu- 
ents, the inorganic salts, lime, iron, soda, pot- 
ash, silica, and magnesia, in their various com- 
binations with acids, as sulphates, chlorides, 
and phosphates, for the maintenance of health, 
and for the cure of disease. Health is a condi- 
tion of harmony in the blood, tissues and or- 
gans, when the cells of which the body is com- 
posed carry their proper quantity and propor- 
tion of animal and mineral molecules, which- 
ensures right motion of the contents, right 
activity of the cells, and right functioning of 
the organs. Disease is lost motion on the 
part of the cells brought about by loss of the 
right quantity of the mineral elements, caused 



WILL-POWER 87 

by any one of several reasons. The cure of 
disease is the choice of the mineral salt that is 
lacking, administered in the minute, micro- 
scopical form, from the 6th to the 12th decimal 
trituration, in which it is present in healthy 
blood and* tissue. Biochemistry is therefore a 
supplying of a deficiency, and its findings are 
very closely allied to modern discoveries touch- 
ing the importance of microscopically small 
particles of matter, germs, microbes, bacteria, 
bacilli, and micro-organisms generally. They 
knew nothing of vitamines or hormones in 
Schuessler's day, but his Biochemistry is none 
the worse for that. Medical Science has a 
habit of waxing enthusiastic over new words 
and shortly forgetting the words and the en- 
thusiasm they roused. With regard to Bio- 
chemistry it would seem to be good sense and 
reason that a body which is built by certain 
elements from the cradle to the grave, must 
be repaired by those same elements, and can- 
not be repaired by any other elements, whether 
harmless or poisonous. This, briefly, is 
Schuessler's theory. 

Ask any homeopath in the United States 
if he ever heard of Schuessler's Tissue Remed- 
ies and he will reply at once, "Oh, the Twelve 
Tissue Remedies ; certainly. Some of them 
we use constantly. They are old homeopathic 
remedies, of course. We used them years be- 
fore Schuessler was born." Ask any homeo- 
pathic manufacturing chemist if he sells 
Schuessler's Tissue Salts and he will say, 
"Oh yes. We manufacture Schuessler's 
Twelve Tissue Remedies, and carry a full 



88 WILL-POWER 

stock of them always. We have them from 
the 2nd to the 12th decimal triturations in 
any quantity desired/' Ask any bookseller of 
homeopathic literature if he has anything new 
on Schuessler and he will answer, "You mean 
Schuessler's Twelve Tissue Remedies? Yes, 
here is Brown and Blank's latest work on these 
salts." He hands you a copy of a thick book. 
Turning over the pages you will find that the 
contents may be good homeopathy, but they 
are certainly bad Schuessler. What is the 
matter with all these people? If there is one 
thing which Biochemistry does not resemble 
in any way whatsoever, that one thing is 
Homeopathy. It is flatly opposed to the 
homeopathic theory in every detail. Schuess- 
ler himself did not scruple to make fun of the 
sacred doctrine of Similia Similibus Curantur, 
which is the shibboleth of homeopathy. 
"Could anything be more absurd," says he, 
"than to suppose that a cold is curable by ad- 
ministering a minute quantity of mucus as a 
medicine?" He practiced for many years as 
a homeopath before he broke clean away from 
that school and evolved his own theory of dis- 
ease and its treatment, which he sent forth to 
the medical world under the name of Biochem- 
istry. His first book told of the Twelve Tis- 
sue Remedies and their use. His last book, 
the proofs of which he corrected just before 
his death in 1898, definitely and clearly stated 
his reasons for reducing the number of the 
Tissue Salts from Twelve to Eleven, eliminat- 
ing calc. sulph., or sulphate of lime, on the 
ground, as he states, that this salt is not 



WILL-POWER 89 

found in human blood and tissue in health and 
must be therefore dropped from the armament 
of the biochemist. "Only those mineral com- 
binations/' says he, "which form a part of the 
constant constitution of the blood in health, 
can be used in the biochemic treatment of dis- 
ease." Is not this plain speech? Is there any- 
thing here which admits of an argument? The 
founder of a system of medicine tells you 
under his own signature, for his last book is 
published by a Philadelphia firm, that the 
Schuessler Tissue Remedies are not Twelve, 
but Eleven, and tells you why the change was 
made, and yet today, wherever you ask for 
information from people who ought to know, 
from people who are even manufacturing the 
salts, you are informed that the Tissue Remed- 
ies of Schuessler are Twelve in number! For 
the double reason that Biochemistry is entirely 
adapted to the use of laymen, and that it 
seems advisable to publish a book conveying 
Schuessler's theory and practice of Biochem- 
istry in strict accordance with his own words, 
neither adding thereto nor subtracting there- 
from, New Thought will elucidate this sys- 
tem in the forthcoming work, constituting No. 
2 of the One-Best-Way Series. 

Biochemistry will teach you how to cure 
yourself if sick, and how to keep yourself 
from getting sick, by use of the material the 
body itself uses for the purpose, administered 
in the minute form in which the body itself 
uses it. This is the nearest thing to a science 
of medicine of which we know. 
THE END 



The One Best Way Series of New Thought 
Books. Each 96 pages and cover, green silk 
cloth bound, printed on heavy egg-shell paper, 
size 5x7. Written by Sydney B. Flower. Price 
each, $1 postpaid to any part of the world; 
four shillings and twopence in Great Britain. 

No. I. Will-Power, Personal Magnetism, 
Memory-Training and Success (illustrated). 

No. II. The Biochemistry of Schuessler. 

No. III. The New Thought System of 
Physical Culture and Beauty Culture (illus- 
trated). 

No. IV. The New Thought System of 
Dietetics. 

No. V. The Goat-Gland Transplantation, 
originated by Dr. J. R. Brinkley of Milford, 
Kas., U. S. A. 

Address New Thought Book Department, 
722-732 Sherman St., Chicago, 111., U. S. A. 

NOTE— The Chicago New Thought office 
closes from March 31st to September 1st, each 
year. 



VOLUME II OF NEW THOUGHT 

Beginning October, 1921, ending March, 1922, com- 
prising six numbers, each 32 pages, 6x9, edited and 
published by Sydney B. Flower, will be issued 
monthly at a markedly REDUCED SUBSCRIP- 
TION PRICE, namely, Single Copies in the U.S.A. 
and Possessions, 10 cents a copy; 50 cents a year 
of six numbers; Canada and Foreign, 12 cents a 
copy; 60 cents a year. Great Britain, sixpence a 
copy; 2/6 a year. 

Note: The Chicago NEW THOUGHT office 
closes from March 31st to September 1st, each year. 

Volume II of NEW THOUGHT will maintain 
the high level attained in Volume I. The same 
contributors, Dr. Brinkley, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, 
William Walker Atkinson, Anne Beauford House- 
man, Alberta Jean Rowell, Nate Collier, Charles H. 
Ingersoll, Athene Rondell, Charles Edmund DeLand 
and others will continue their valuable series 
throughout the year. 

The cartoons of Nate Collier and the articles of 
Arthur Brisbane will continue as special features. 

Many new writers will be added. 

The editor will contribute a series of six articles 
upon the effects of Dr. Brinkley's Goat-Gland Trans- 
plantation, speaking from first-hand knowledge and 
inviting question, comment and discussion. 

SPECIAL THREE YEAR SUBSCRIPTION OR 

ONE YEAR SUBSCRIPTION TO THREE 

DIFFERENT ADDRESSES 

We make a special rate for three year subscrip- 
tions in the U. S. A. and possessions of $1 for 
Volume II, October, 1921, to March, 1922, inclusive, 
or one year subscription to three different addresses 
at the same rate, $1; Canada and Foreign, $1.50; 
Great Britain, six shillings. We invite you to take 
fullest advantage of this attractive offer. 

Address: NEW THOUGHT, 732 Sherman St., 
Chicago, 111., U. S. A. 



VOLUME I OF NEW THOUGHT 
A monthly magazine, 32 pages, 6x9, edited and pub- 
lished by Sydney B. Flower, comprising 196 pages 
of reading matter in seven issues, viz., Oct., Nov., 
Dec, 1920, and Jan., Feb., March, April-May, 1921. 

Price, bound in cloth, $2.50, or Ten Shillings, post- 
paid to any part of the world. 

Volume I of NEW THOUGHT contains: Seven 
articles written by J. R. Brinkley, M. D., on his 
wonderful goat-gland transplantation work; a series 
of articles on New Thought by such famous writ- 
ers as Ella Wheeler Wilcox, William Walker At- 
kinson, Anne Beauford Houseman, Alberta Jean 
Rowell, Veni Cooper-Mathieson, of Australia, and 
Nate Collier of New York; a series of articles on 
Astrology by Athene Rondell; a series of articles 
on Spirit-Phenomena by Charles Edmund DeLand; 
and begins a series by Charles H. Ingersoll on the 
Single Tax. The volume includes five regular 
monthly cartoons by Nate Collier; with special ar- 
ticles by Arthur Brisbane, most highly paid writer 
in the United States, stating thecase against spir- 
itualism; and a number of special articles by the 
editor and others on Health, Psychology, etc. 

The brightest and most vital and most fascinat- 
ing magazine published. Volume I is to be had only 
in its bound form, and the number of copies is 
limited. No plates were made and the type is de- 
stroyed. The book is therefore a unique and limited 
first edition. 

Orders for this book will be accepted now, to be 
filled not later than September 15, 1921, in the order 
of their receipt, cash to accompany order. 

Cash will be returned immediately to unsuccessful 
applicants. We shall not reprint this book, after 
this bound edition is exhausted, in the original and 
complete form in which you may now procure it. 

Address: NEW THOUGHT, 732 Sherman St., 
Chicago, 111., U. S. A. 

Note: The Chicago NEW THOUGHT office 
closes from March 31st to September 1st, each year. 



